Many readers will recall the October 2011 article by Paul Voosen titled Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global warming. The article presented the different responses from a number of climate scientists, including John Barnes, Kevin Trenberth, Susan Solomon, Jean-Paul Vernier, Ben Santer, John Daniel, Judith Lean, James Hansen, Martin Wild, and Graeme Stephens, to the question, “Why, despite steadily accumulating greenhouse gases, did the rise of the planet’s temperature stall for the past decade?” The different replies led Roger Pielke, Sr. to note at the end of his post Candid Comments from Climate Scientists:

These extracts from the Greenwire article illustrate why the climate system is not yet well understood. The science is NOT solved.

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight — dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.

The study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely, who led the research as part of his CU-Boulder doctoral thesis. Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet.

Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000, which is significant for Earth’s climate. Contributions to this increase both from moderate volcanic eruptions and from enhanced coal burning in Asia have been suggested. Current observations are insufficient to attribute the contribution of the different sources. Here we use a global climate model coupled to an aerosol microphysical model to partition the contribution of each. We employ model runs that include the increases in anthropogenic sulfur dioxide (SO2) over Asia and the moderate volcanic explosive injections of SO2 observed from 2000 to 2010. Comparison of the model results to observations reveals that moderate volcanic eruptions, rather than anthropogenic influences, are the primary source of the observed increases in stratospheric aerosol.

Bottom line: There’s still no consensus from climate scientists about the cause of the slowdown in the warming rate of global surface temperatures.

And of course, the sea surface temperature and ocean heat content reveal another reason: there hadn’t been a strong El Niño to release monumental volumes of warm water from below the surface of the tropical Pacific and shift up the sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic, Indian and West Pacific Oceans. Refer to my essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” and my ebook Who Turned on the Heat?

It appears the back peddling has started. There is no extreme AGW crisis to solve.
The next step would be media discussion of the green scams.http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/27/candid-comments-from-global-warming-scientists/
John Daniel:
“We make a mistake, anytime the temperature goes up, you imply this is due to global warming,” he said. “If you make a big deal about every time it goes up, it seems like you should make a big deal about every time it goes down.”
JC comment: Well somebody had to finally say this, thank you John Daniel.

Just looking at the variables, this is a remarkably stupid epicycle.
In the Carbon Cult model, the input variable is CO2 and the output is “global” temperature, and the model says the output should follow the input.
Facts aren’t cooperating with the model. The output variable is moving in various ways, but it’s not following the CO2 input.
A normal dishonest pseudoscientist would try to keep his model alive by introducing an OPPOSING epicycle, a made-up variable that keeps subtracting more and more from the output to keep it flat while the input increases.
But our dear Carbon Cult friends don’t even know how to be normal dishonest pseudoscientists. They introduce a CONSTANT epicycle, which won’t help their cause. Volcanos are a constant input, so they won’t counteract the increasing CO2 input.

If an increase in stratospheric SO2 content is what’s causing a slowdown / stop in global warming, isn’t it likely that a decrease in SO2 was the cause of the earlier global warming itself? And what do the actual levels of SO2 look like? Since their results are strictly from models, what assumptions as to CO2 and SO2 climate sensitivities are they using?

There would appear to be a logic problem here.
We are told:
=that the reason for ‘Super Storm Sandy” was ‘global warming’;
=that the reason for all the snow is extra moisture caused by ‘global warming’;
=that the reason for the heatwaves in Australia is ‘global warming’
=that the droughts in Texas and the mid-west is ‘glbbal warming’
=that the reason for the continual rain on UK was ‘global warming’
=that the reason for the melt of the Arctic ice cap was ‘global warming’
=that the reason for the extra ice extent in the Antarctic is ‘global warming’
And now we are told that the reason there has been NO global warming for 15 years is because of volcanic aerosols?
So as it is now agreed that there has been no significant global warming for 15 years and we now have been given a solid reason for that being the case – the preceding claims of severe weather being caused by warming they now agree didn’t happen must be false.

There also volumes of optical depth measurements of the totat atmosphere, taken all during that interval, which contradict his thesis. I haven’t read the paper yet, so I should be silent, but it isn’t like no one has been looking at that issue. Lots of people have.

“Bottom line: There’s still no consensus from climate scientists about the cause of the slowdown in the warming rate of global surface temperatures.”
if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.

Does this sound familiar? It should–it’s the same argument used to explain the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977 only then it was supposed to have been increased atmospheric sulfur as a result of increased use of higher sulfur coal. The cool period ended abruptly in 1978 with no change in either either atmospheric sulfur or CO2.
Volcanoes have been spitting out sulfur for millions of years and there is no evidence of any significant difference today than at any other time in geologic history.
How long will political scientists continue to ignore the excellent correlation between global warming and cooling and ocean temperature changes, such as the PDO, AMO, ENSO, etc and attempt to ‘explain’ global warming and cooling on such flimsy scenarios?

Nonsense fewer cokes and beers have been sold globally. Most certainly the cause as they emit sequestered CO2 and now not so much. I heard about this theory while marching with James Hansen. One of the chants I believe.

It takes exactly 2 seconds to see the error in this. And 2 seconds to see the bias.
‘Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000, which is significant for Earth’s climate.’
Earth’s atmosphere, not the Earth’s climate.

…where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet.
I wonder if they realize clouds are made of water particles, too. And that clouds vastly overwhelm those water particles with a direct volcanic origin? Maybe they just consider clouds as obnoxious things that get in the way of their observations as they look skyward.
A typical “can’t see the forest for the trees” quandry.

Mosher, ” if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.”
Yes, you finally get it. Now, live with it.

“Bottom line: There’s still no consensus from climate scientists about the cause of the slowdown in the warming rate of global surface temperatures.”
if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.

You’re the only one to introduct the word “conspiracy”, Steven. Are you a conspiracy monger? Or do you have something to contribute to the discussion?

Steven Mosher says:
March 2, 2013 at 6:23 am
“Bottom line: There’s still no consensus from climate scientists about the cause of the slowdown in the warming rate of global surface temperatures.”
if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.
______________________
Again, Mosh- you are trying to make a point with a fairy tale.
Why try to attribute words to others which they did not say? Lots of comments have been taking you to task for this sort of thing, lately. Don’t you remember where you are, or what you’ll find here at WUWT?

It looks very much to me like there are only two dials in the climate models of any significance, CO2 to make temperatures go up and volcanic aerosols to make temperatures go down. So the only thing surprising about this study to me is that it eliminated Asian industrialization as the culprit. When the models can predict the magnitude of an ENSO cycle, can better understand the decadonal ocean processes and have a much better understanding of water vapor, clouds and thunderstorms, they might become good predictive tools as opposed to after the fact rationalization mechanisms.

This is very basically and clearly what Popper referred to as the “immunisation” of a theory against disproof.
It is always, guaranteed possible to conceive an immunisation of any theory against disproof, post hoc.
That is why the only method in real science of establishing the legitimacy of a hypothesis is to propose what will happen in given circumstances (eg, an experiment or if CO2 keeps rising) if the hypothesis iscorrect and what will happen if it is not, the null hypothesis, BEFORE the predicted data is gathered.
The AGW hypothesis is embodied in its modelling. The modelling would need to take account of aerosols to be valid. That validity would have emerged in the prediction of this warming hiatus on the basis of known volcanic events.
The modelling, in spiteof volcanic events being known, did not predict this warming hiatus. ergo, the models are wrong. Therefore the hypothesis is falsified.
AGW proponents have never, as far as I am aware, proposed a null hypothesis. Findings that would potentially disprove the hypothesis. That in itself is pseudo-scientific. The only thing resemblinga null hypothesis they offered was that 15 years without warming would inducate a doubt over the theory. That 15 years is now in.
The bottom line is this, ignore the immunising sophistry after-the-fact, concentrate on the main point: they knew about the volcanoes, but their hypothesis never predicted such an outcome. Hypothesis is wrong.

Don Easterbrook says:
March 2, 2013 at 6:24 amHow long will political scientists continue to ignore the excellent correlation between global warming and cooling and ocean temperature changes, such as the PDO, AMO, ENSO, etc and attempt to ‘explain’ global warming and cooling on such flimsy scenarios?
The AMO’s 9 and 60 year oscillations correlate directly to the combination of the solar and geo-magnetic variability as shown herehttp://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sun-Earth.htm
Eventually someone will correctly identify physical process driving the oceanic oscillations.

Steven Mosher says: “if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter. If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.”
Hmm. I don’t recall ever saying that the sun explains it all, Steven. Wanna try again?

Steven Mosher, you write “if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.”
Not at all. In the SPMs to the AR4, the conclusions are stated with phrases like “extremely likely”, and “very likely”, which, on page 3, are define as being >95% probability, and >90% probability repsectively. I do not believe the reasons the IPCC stated for their confidence, and this lack of consensus merely underlines the suspicion that these confidence limits are based on very little, if any, physics.

Oh, yes, anything but solar variations and a complete unwillingness to look at the obvious that is staring you in the face – that climate scientists are completely unable to admit that they may be wrong about their golden calf.

Am I having a senior moment? The sentence:Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000, which is significant for Earth’s climate. says the atmosphere is becoming more optically transparent. To me that means light has an easier route through the atmosphere, so how does this cause extreme cooling to counteract the extreme heating from CO2? I thought the aerosols were optically more opaque to cause cooling.

I could find very little on the history of sulfur removal from fossil fuels, Except that it started as early as the 1950s, and the main industrial source of sulfur is oil refineries. So they are currently removing a lot of sulfur from petrol/diesel.
30 years ago in SE Asia, cities had an acrid street level haze, which is now almost completely gone. The removal of sulfur from fuels is probably a significant factor.
It’s plausible that reduced sulfur emissions from vehicles played a role in the post 70s warming. And increased sulfur emissions from increased coal burning from the late 90s reversed this trend. No need to invoke volcanoes.
Since both China and India have seen large increases in coal consumption since the 1990s, if sulfur causes cooling, then we should expect to see regional cooling in both places. We don’t. We see cooling or limited warming in India, and general warming in China, which indicates black and organic carbon emissions play a bigger role in temperature (BC and OC cool) and BC/OC have been recently found to reach the stratosphere.

Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000
This begs the question: What was the increase between 1980 and 2000?

Mr. Mosher, whose point (or what point) are you trying to make here? If “we” won’t a accept the science because the consensus either doesn’t exist or it’s a conspiracy, what does that say about the flip side of the coin? Do you seriously suppose the AGW folks are simply following the science to where it leads them, with nary a thought to policy advocacy, or might it just possibly be the case that they have made up their minds a long time ago and are looking, always and every time, for a justification for their correctness? Little volcanoes? Really?

Heck we are talking solar, I didn’t say it was just the sun. I would like to find someone who said that because frankly I don’t know anyone who believes it was just the sun. What nonsense, where does Steve get his ideas for these conspiracy theories of his?

Let me see if I understand this:
In any year, the measured average temperature of the Earth will go up, or down.
If the temperature goes up, it’s due to human CO2 output, and we must stop our industry. It’s obviously human CO2, because we can measure CO2 output, divide that by the temperature rise, and get a figure for unit CO2 effect. It must be that, because we can’t think of anything else it could be.
If the temperature goes down, it’s due to human aerosol emissions, and we must stop our industry. It’s obviously human aerosol emissions because we can measure aerosol output, divide that by the temperature rise, and get a figure for unit aerosol emissions effect. It must be that, because we can’t think of anything else it could be.
You know, if they can make this stick, they’ve got us. Those arguments are not capable of being disproven until someone fully understands the climate. And with our economies collapsed, there won’t be any money left for that…
P.S – the maths implied above conforms fully to climate science guidelines, and is warranted genuine…

Steven Mosher says:
March 2, 2013 at 6:23 am
“Bottom line: There’s still no consensus from climate scientists about the cause of the slowdown in the warming rate of global surface temperatures.”
if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.

The problem with your statement (a rare complete thought from you) is we are constantly reminded by the carbophobic climate alarmists that they have the full force and and credibility of a world wide consensus. Except that there is now a consensus that warming paused years ago and they don’t know or agree why, it’s dead, Mosh – the consensus is dead. Nothing left but the soulless empty shells of climate zombies walking away from the light. Let it go.

The Pinatubo eruption was the largest eruption of the past decades. The resultant temperature drop was about 0.6°C at its maximum effect and the effect was fast declining, but still measurable over the following 3 years. The Volcanic Explosion Index (VEI) of the Pinatubo eruption was 6 on a logarithmic scale, which is a measure of the amount of debris and SO2 pushed into the atmosphere/stratosphere.
Every year or so, there are smaller eruptions of VEI 4, thus a factor 100 less aerosols for volcanic eruptions like the Eyjafyallajökull in Iceland. That means, taking into account the aerosols of 3 moderate volcanoes accumulating over 3 years, an average of 0.012°C cooling caused by volcanic aerosols over the past decade or so.
Even if that doubled over the past decade, is simply is unmeasurable in the noise and not the cause of the standstill, if CO2 has such a huge effect as implemented in current models…

I’m assuming there is some constant level of these smaller volcanoes going off.
Was there some surge starting in 2000?
No. There is roughly the same number of smaller ones each decade so it has not contributed to a “change” in the trend of stratospheric aerosols starting in 2000. We’re at the same aerosol optical depth values that we were at from 1920 to 1962 for example (during a period when there were no large volcanoes).
GISS has updated their Aerosol Optical depth – tau – numbers here up to the year 2012. It is provided in 4 different levels including the 20 km to 30 km level that this study is based on.
Visual of the total tau from 1850 to 2012 here.http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/tau.map_2012.12.pdf
Detailed table by year, latitude, and level here.http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/tau.map_2012.12.txt
Main page here.http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/

I think those must be GWDCVs: Global Warming Denier Created Volcanoes, because they came at the right time to distract the public from the important truths that climate scientists are trying to communicate.
More seriously, as Don Easterbrook says, these things have either been operating all the time or we have more serious problems with those volcanoes because they have ramped up their output all of a sudden.

This 2013 paper will be making waves: https://sites.google.com/site/fredericparreninpro/publications
==
As for this: “Comparison of the model results to observations reveals that moderate volcanic eruptions, rather than anthropogenic influences, are the primary source of the observed increases in stratospheric aerosol.”
So when it cools it’s natural but when it warms, it’s anthropogenic… So much for geoengineering, human influence on climate etc… They shoot themselves in the foot and smile!

>> John Daniel:
>> “We make a mistake, anytime the temperature goes up, you imply
>> this is due to global warming,”…
Curious : we have a few heat waves here and there, which result
in fractional increases in the Mean Global Temperature, which is
presumably how one detects the presence of global (sic) warming (sic).
Then it is claimed that GW has caused the heat waves.
Sorry, pass that by me again ?

Ian W / March 2, 2013 at 6:06 am “And now we are told that the reason there has been NO global warming for 15 years is because of volcanic aerosols?”
I admit, its difficult to understand: global warming is allready 15 years on the highest level of modern times, in the same time, there seems to be no accelaration (increase) for the moment;
this misunderstanding is caused because peole like Monckton and Morano to name a few show only the years with standstill, and not what was before;

Sean says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:14 am
“It looks very much to me like there are only two dials in the climate models of any significance, CO2 to make temperatures go up and volcanic aerosols to make temperatures go down.”
Were that right then everyone ought to switch to coal power.
When it gets cold we run as now with desulphurisation. If it gets too hot we save money by not scrubbing the flues.
Unfortunately, Sean is near certainly wrong. So he or she can’t conceive of a confounding factor? But that does not mean that there isn’t one.
Still, as simple models go it does lead to cheap policies.

This could create problems for the alarmists. They didn’t want to attribute the current cooling to mankind so they claim it is natural. Of course, this means the cooling from 1950-1980 couldn’t have been man made aerosols either since more aerosols are produced now. That completely destroys their current theory and falsifies all the models. Oops.

It is amazing that solar variability is neglected. It has been shown in several papers that the sun’s variability is a quite large component in the variability of ocean and atmosphere in the Pacific area, and that the sunspot peaks influence the monsoons. Likewise, that the Gleissberg maxima and minima in the past 200 years influence the trends in circulation and temperature.

This study says volcanic activity slows global warming. A previous study by Marion Jegen, published in the journal Geology, says global warming causes an increase in volcanic eruptions. We now have a negative feedback that will keep warming in check. Problem solved!

Climatology has gone from an established and absolute science (in the minds of the Warmists0, to wild speculation and desperate hand waving as ever more studies contradict the ‘consensus’ and data alteration is exposed. Grants are at stake. Fame is at stake. There is a sense of panic.
And Ms Curry, bless her heart, knows it.

polistra says:
March 2, 2013 at 5:57 am
“Just looking at the variables, this is a remarkably stupid epicycle.”
Spot on! All the rest is just the details.
Alarmists are psychologically incapable of taking a step back from their analytical tools, models, and asking themselves what is wrong with the larger framework.
Their problem is one that turns up in all marketing endeavors. When you are lucky early and establish a brand, you will tend to ride that brand until it is stone dead.

kim says: March 2, 2013 at 6:08 am
Well, the obvious next step, sacrificing virgins.
_________________________
Can’t we sacrifice some old geezer instead? I kinda like the temple-priestess Vestal Virgins, and would like to show them the errors in their theology.
Sorry, old geezers, no offence, but…..
.

Wamron says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:15 am
“The bottom line is this, ignore the immunising sophistry after-the-fact, concentrate on the main point: they knew about the volcanoes, but their hypothesis never predicted such an outcome. Hypothesis is wrong.”
Once again, the CAGW crowd is nailed. The CAGW crowd is flailing in ad hockery.

Steven Mosher says: “if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter. If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.”
If this really was written by someone of this name, the lack of proper punctuation says volumes. Yes, I make “typos” now and then, but this is more than a typo. Halmark of a “narcicistic” personality. Sigh…

.
BTW, the Biased Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has just run an item on the record snowfall in Japan. And the reason for all this snow? Yes, you’ve guessed it – Global Warming.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21625702
You could not make it up. Do these people know how rediculous they sound? Can they see the dimensions of the hole they are digging? This can, and will, end up with the BBC being disbanded, as unfit for duty and public service.
.

According to http://volcanic-eruptions.findthedata.org/, the number of moderate volcanic eruptions has decreased compared to the 1990s: – same story for moderate/large, small, very large and colossal. Confused.

Ian W / March 2, 2013 at 6:06 am “And now we are told that the reason there has been NO global warming for 15 years is because of volcanic aerosols?”
I admit, its difficult to understand: global warming is allready 15 years on the highest level of modern times, in the same time, there seems to be no accelaration (increase) for the moment;
this misunderstanding is caused because peole like Monckton and Morano to name a few show only the years with standstill, and not what was before;

No, Martin–they didn’t say there was standstill before the past 15 years, just within the past 15 years. Is reading comprehension or logical thought your problem?
Postscript: Cold kills, remember? Warmth (along with abundant CO2) promotes life in the biosphere, of which we are a small part. Something to think about.

Rumours of our certainty, were very much exaggerated.
Reality seems to be causing a new disease amongst the faithful, I shall christen it, Grant withdrawal Stress Syndrome.
But it may be a much older disorder, Fear of being exposed for the phoneys they know themselves to be.
So old, a syndrome that we have a folk story, The Emperors New Clothes, to cover it.

Don Easterbrook says:
March 2, 2013 at 6:24 am
Your first 2 paragraphs are a combination of historical reflection and factual geologic aspects. That all seems reasonable enough to those of us of a certain age!
Your 3rd paragraph shifts to asking about “political scientists” although that specific group does not seem to be the real intent of your statement. Let’s instead think of the political classes and the self-thought-of élites. Such groups are not interested in the correlations you mention, and these can be dismissed because they are not combined into an explanatory whole easily grasped by a TV viewer. Compare this situation to that of “drifting continents” and so on (not well accepted or highly relevant to policy makers and élites) that eventually was popularly accepted under the heading of “plate tectonics.” This became science that could be used. When scientists can explain the “PDO, AMO, ENSO, etc” in a way the élites can use this to push their ‘agenda’ , they will shift from “ignore” to “embrace.” If earth scientists can show why the people ought to feel guilty about these things, so much the better. Follow the money, this is not about science.

Steven Mosher says:
if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.
Hey Steven, I’m not bitching. I’m laughing!

Silver Ralph says:
March 2, 2013 at 9:46 am
kim says: March 2, 2013 at 6:08 am
Well, the obvious next step, sacrificing virgins.
_________________________
Can’t we sacrifice some old geezer instead? I kinda like the temple-priestess Vestal Virgins, and would like to show them the errors in their theology.
Sorry, old geezers, no offence, but….
_________________
Why don’t you and a truckload of yer pals come on over and try to load me up to drive me to the volcano… I’ll show you how to really thin the herd.

Scrap every Globull warming model,and take the name of scientist away from all the frauds,and poof,problem gone.Do most of us truly realize what idiots we are for letting these snake-oil scam artists and legal frauds get away with the crap called cAGW(or whatever name they use now).Did we learn nothing from the Romans or Greeks?

An interesting addition to the knowledge of our climate!
I am not a global warming sceptic in the normally accepted sense, but I am in the second half of my eightieth decade on this planet and it seems quite obvious to me that there has to be significant scope for error in climate change projections, simply because we probably understand a minute fraction of one percent of the way in which our planet and the species on it work, let alone the universe (or multiverse) in which our planet resides. It seems to me that Scientists should constantly remind themselves of this to prevent a not uncommon tendency to arrogance.
An example of how little we know was shown on BBC news this week when two scientists who had just returned from a deep dive ( can’t recall which ocean) to study undersea vents, reported that they had spent a considerable time on vents that they initially thought they had seen before, only to find hat hey were entirely unexplored ones! They were running at 400c – how many more are there I wonder?

Wamron says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:15 am
………………………………………..
The AGW hypothesis is embodied in its modelling. The modelling would need to take account of aerosols to be valid. That validity would have emerged in the prediction of this warming hiatus on the basis of known volcanic events.
The modelling, in spiteof volcanic events being known, did not predict this warming hiatus. ergo, the models are wrong. Therefore the hypothesis is falsified.

Bearing in mind that volcanoes are natural, you also need to bear in mind the following.

“The LLNL-led research shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2011/Nov/NR-11-11-03.html

The above abstract talks of moderate while the IPCC talks of something bigger. Something is wrong with the models not the climate.

IPCC – Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
Volcanoes produce abrupt climate responses on short time scales. The surface cooling effect of the stratospheric aerosols, the main climatic forcing factor, decays in one to three years after an eruption due to the lifetime of the aerosols in the stratosphere. It is possible for one large volcano or a series of large volcanic eruptions to produce climate responses on longer time scales, especially in the subsurface region of the ocean (Delworth et al., 2005; Gleckler et al., 2006b).
The models’ ability to simulate any possible abrupt response of the climate system to volcanic eruptions seems conceptually similar to their ability to simulate the climate response to future changes in greenhouse gases in that both produce changes in the radiative forcing of the planet.http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-7-2-3.html

The only problem with CAGW (aka “Climate Change,” etc) is that it is not being allowed to fail. Rather, like a dead cornstalk that has been blown over by the winter winds, it is propped up again and again so that the scarecrow can protect it…

@ RockyRoad / March 2, 2013 at 10:04 am “No, Martin–they didn’t say there was standstill before the past 15 years, just within the past 15 years. Is reading comprehension or logical thought your problem? ”
I’m afraid that it is you that has to learn to read or think: people like Monckton and Morano show only the years with standstill (since 1997), and not what was before 1997, the years with temperature rise (early eighties into the late nineties culminating in 1998;
here is a link to a graph with the temperature in the last 150 years or so:http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

Jimbo says:
March 2, 2013 at 10:39 am
Right. This is the death knell for the claim of consensus. Anytime the claim is brought up, one need only produce testimony from the article to falsify the claim. Of course, the IPCC and other professional spinners will spin exponentially. But the ball is in their court and it has gone flat.

The surface cooling effect of the stratospheric aerosols, the main climatic forcing factor, decays in one to three years after an eruption due to the lifetime of the aerosols in the stratosphere. It is possible for one large volcano or a series of large volcanic eruptions to produce climate responses on longer time scales, especially in the subsurface region of the ocean (Delworth et al., 2005; Gleckler et al., 2006b).

So UNDERSEA small volcanic vents and eruptions (that no body the past 15 years has even noticed or bothered to publicize or write about) are supposed to be producing STRATOSPHERIC and tropospheric AEROSOL “pollution” (that nobody previously has noticed or written about) sufficient to make all of the world’s global circulation models useless and void by “cancelling” all of the 100% of the “catastrophic” CO2 calculations those very same models have been using since 1978 ?????
But of course, there were NO such small volcanic vents and undersea eruptions between 1973 and 1997 when CO2 was the only influence on climate … ????

Since those naughty volcanoes are stopping us from frying (John Cook’s brain excepted) and making a mockery of predictions of frying, it is only logical* that deniers are thrown into the lava to appease the Volcano Gods who are mightily miffed by CO2. Behold;Clearly volcanoes have nothing on us. They’re hardly a fluctuation on what we’re doing. So, the next time you hear someone trying to use that unfactoid to deny climate change, let them know what the truth really is**http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/22/as-arctic-ice-shrinks-so-does-a-denier-claim/#.UTI6iqMYbJshttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-may-increase
* remember this is a thought exercise and therefore I can say I will catch, gut and eat deniers alive as that’s okay. I am not agreeing with my own statements just putting the feelers out to see if we can get political traction and in the hope that compared to this life imprisonment for deniers will seem quite reasonable. This is the compromise we may have to accept.
** answers containing any doubt must refer to* as the only questions for science are how we ‘sustainably’ dispose of denier bodies. The scientific, media, political community are settled on human sacrifice [for some].
/sarc

Steven Mosher says:
March 2, 2013 at 6:23 am“if they agreed youd bitch that it was a conspiracy or that consensus didnt matter.
If they disagree youd bitch that the science wasnt settled and remark that the sun explains it all.”
Remarkable. If they agreed, you’d trumpet the consensus. When they disagree, you blame us for attaching any significance to it.
Tom J says:
March 2, 2013 at 6:27 am“‘Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000, which is significant for Earth’s climate.’”
At the low end, 1.04^13 = 1.67, and at the high end, 1.1^13 = 3.45. The magic of compound interest. Are they really saying that it’s gone up between 67% and 245%?
Theo Goodwin says:
March 2, 2013 at 9:38 am“When you are lucky early and establish a brand, you will tend to ride that brand until it is stone dead.”
They have no choice. They burned all the bridges, and passed the point of no return long ago with their strident, no-compromises rhetoric and take-no-prisoners policies of personal destruction. They are now surrounded by hordes of hostile facts, and it is a fight to the death against the forces of reality.
john robertson says:
March 2, 2013 at 10:06 am“I shall christen it, Grant withdrawal Stress Syndrome.”
Grant Interruption Stress Syndrome = GISS

ok, so global cooling is natural…..global warming is unnatural
Are they also saying that all the temp reconstructions are correct?
That our present temps are an anomaly and are too high?..that the planet wants to be cooler?
…and what does that say about global warming?

@ Don Easterbrook / March 2, 2013 at 6:24 am “The cool period ended abruptly in 1978 with no change in either atmospheric sulfur or CO2.”
don,
You should read this article: Anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions: 1850–2005http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/1101/2011/acp-11-1101-2011.pdf
please pay special attention to some of the graphs: they show a ‘peaking’ of sulphur emissions around 1975, then a decline;
(CO2 continues to go up as it did before and still does)
a little bit later- end seventies – the temperature is going up;

But, kim is looking for virgins to throw on the volcano.
And the rest us are looking for old skinny geysers to throw in the volcano to thin out the herd whilst we look at (er, for) kim’s new virgins.
So, being eight, do you qualify as an old virgin geyser? Or are you just blowing smoke, and are really an old veteran geyser?

Phil Beradley says
“It’s plausible that reduced sulfur emissions from vehicles played a role in the post 70s warming. And increased sulfur emissions from increased coal burning from the late 90s reversed this trend. ”
dje–You’ve overlooked the last part–“The cool period ended abruptly in 1978 with no change in either either atmospheric sulfur or CO2.” The climate reversal from cool to warm occurred within single year–much to abruptly for sulfur changes to have been the cause.

Well, since “moderate volcanoes” have been active, for centuries and we even had some big messy volcanoes, also prior to 2000, what has changed? If Pinatubo (second most violent one since Krakatoa in the 19th Century) and others couldn’t hold Global warming back but for a year or so, how are these little guys doing it differently than before? Here is a graph of “optical depth as a measurement of aerosols from 1860 -2000:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-2-18.html
Note that very low activity does coincide with the 30s hot period but also coincides with the 40s to mid 60s very cold period. In the warming period 1980s to 2000 we have high aerosols which should have made this another cold period. Indeed record aerosols blocking during the period occurred. Anyone got the data for post 2000?
I have this: ” we take advantage of this well-calibrated set of measurements by applying a
newly-developed aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieval algorithm over land and ocean
to investigate the distribution of AOD, and to identify emerging patterns and trends
in global and regional aerosol loading during its 13-yr mission. Our results indicate
that the averaged AOD trend over global ocean is weakly positive from 1998 to 2010″http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/8465/2012/acpd-12-8465-2012.pdf

Silver Ralph says:
March 2, 2013 at 9:56 am
“BTW, the Biased Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has just run an item on the record snowfall in Japan. And the reason for all this snow? Yes, you’ve guessed it – Global Warming”http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21625702
You can see the disarray in the hot community during this stressful period. The British Broadcorping Castration didn’t get the little volcanoes memo causing the snow and cold,.

Martin van Etten says:
March 2, 2013 at 11:14 am
……..
Two significant rises in the North Atlantic SST (AMO) and the North Hemisphere temperature records took place in the mid 1920s and at the end of 1970s. There were two major climate unrelated events about same time:http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image018.jpg
Solar and geomagnetic changes combined produce strong correlation with the above temperature natural variability:http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
No need for aerosols.

The irony of all this is: If we are going into global warming in lock-step with CO2 and aerosols are keeping us cool, then rather than expensive pie-in-the-sky geoengineering to spread aerosols to mitigate global warming,we can use cheap coal burning to do the same thing and get cheap electricity as a byproduct. Anyone? What’s wrong with this?
I’ve seen some other irony re volcanoes, suggesting that global warming is causing increased volcanic activity – how’s this for a beautiful negative feedback?

And the temperature rise from about 1910 to 1945? If anything, the aerosols from industrial pollution would have had a noticeable effect during that time and reduced the temps rather than have them increase at a comensurate rate to the ’80s and 90’s.

BarryW says:
March 2, 2013 at 12:29 pm“And the temperature rise from about 1910 to 1945?”
Yep. Which, incidentally, is so precisely tuned that it is virtually an exact replica.
This sort of thing does not happen by chance. Whatever handwaving arguments people make that the increase in CO2 must have an effect, the data themselves show virtually none. Temperatures are repeating a pre-existing pattern with no evident divergence.
I am not arguing that the GHE does not exist. But, it is readily apparent that, under the current state of the system, the partial derivative of the function, i.e., sensitivity, of globally averaged temperature to CO2 is essentially nil.

I’m sick of excuses. I’d be hugely impressed if – just once – these warmists would stand up and say: “We got it wrong. We modelled it wrong.”
Shuffling papers and muttering excuses does not an adult make.

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
– Donald Rumsfeld – Former United States Secretary of Defense – February 12, 2002

“How long will political scientists continue to ignore the excellent correlation between global warming and cooling and ocean temperature changes, such as the PDO, AMO, ENSO, etc and attempt to ‘explain’ global warming and cooling on such flimsy scenarios?”
Answer: for as long as taxpayers keep funding the gravy train.

These scientists are going exactly what scientists are supposed to do: when results don’t agree with predictions, look around and figure out why not. Revise theory, test again.
I know everyone here wants CO2 not to be a satanic gas, but that’s very, very unlikely to happen. The radiative part of the calculation of climate sensitivity is among the best known parts of climate science, since it depends on quantum mechanics, which is known to be a very good theory.
The uncertainties lie in the *rest* of the calculation: aerosols, black soot, clouds, feedbacks, deep ocean dynamics. Except for the first two — which are negative feedbacks — there is little man can do about climate change unless CO2 is reduced, or scrubbed and sequestered. That’s the bottom line.

AGW requires a warming in the tropical Troposphere but none detected by satellites and it is claimed that as many as 28 million weather balloons have also failed.
So whatever these comedians are up to it is linked to their own in built fantasies.
What is more the warmers like Mosher speak of “forcing” ……which I assume means positive feedback. Therefore one would like to know what negative feedback is in their play stations.

Phobos says:
March 2, 2013 at 2:30 pm
—————–
The satanic gas that causes plants to utilize water resources more efficiently and generally increases yields? That satanic gas?
I don’t have any issue with the radiative theory. It’s the application of the theory in this extremely complicated instance that makes thinks messy, with the feedbacks as you note if with nothing else.
Tell me, why are you so sold on the idea that the sign of the total feebacks is even positive?

Phobos…what you say is NOT what they are doing. They are not taking failed predictions as indicative of flaws in their hypothesis and change it…no, they are making excuses for a flawed hypothesis so as to pretend there is nothing wrong with it.
Unless you can control for all contingent variables you cannot know what the cause of the dependent variable is. You say its not a flaw in modelling the independent variable (CO2) but some contingent variable. Its quite literally impossible to make that assertion unless you establish controls for those contingent variables. Its simple. If x plus Y equals five and X or Y is three, EITHER x or y may equal 2 and you have no way of establishing which. What you are doing is guessing on an assumption.
This is basic undergraduate principles of science.

Don J. Easterbrook says:
March 2, 2013 at 11:28 am
dje–You’ve overlooked the last part–”The cool period ended abruptly in 1978 with no change in either either atmospheric sulfur or CO2.” The climate reversal from cool to warm occurred within single year–much to abruptly for sulfur changes to have been the cause.
What looks like step change in a single year, could result from what occurs over several years, because of the ‘noise’ of natural variability. In 1976 the USA (which means Canada as well because the auto industries are integrated) mandated catalytic converters all new petrol vehicles as well as other vehicle pollution reduction measures. This would have reduced NOx, SOx, BC and OC emissions. Much of the rest of the world followed soon after.
This would have cause a substantial reduction is aerosols, over say 5 years, in and around urban areas mostly, and the surface stations have a strong urban bias.
There’s the main reason for the late 20th century warming.

In many of the entertaining yet disturbing AGW stories, we here the word theory.
What in the hell is happening to our world? “Scientific Theory” is the pinnacle of human knowledge & Universal understanding.
AGW is a “Working Hypothesis” and has been for the past 3 decades. The work consists of a consensus that has acquired donations for the studies and if all goes well (for the scam artists point of view), the working hypothesis will continue for many more decades…

D.B. Stealey says: / March 2, 2013 at 11:11 am
“I have to laugh at Martin van Etten. He so craves runaway global warming, so he can say he was right.”
heya! stealey,
did you do your howework on my questions on Kinnard and Maslowski? seehttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/22/ipcc-railroad-engineer-pachauri-acknowledges-no-warming-for-17-years/
do you know already why the graph of Mr. Rose and Mr Monckton is wrong?
do you know anything about the working of climate since you talk about runaway climate?
so anyway, please be more substantial;

van Etten says:
“whats wrong with you?”
The question, Martin, is: what is wrong with you? The longer the time scale, the better when looking at trends and correlation.
For example, here we see clearly that there is no long term correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.
Any honest scientist would admit by now that the total failure of their predictions means that their conjecture has been thoroughly falsified. So either admit it, or we will know that you are being dishonest. You cannot constantly come up with your ‘say anything’ excuses for the failure of your predictions, and retain any integrity. You are either honest, or you’re not. I think most of us here know the answer to that by now.
You ask: “do you know anything about the working of climate since you talk about runaway climate?”
Note that it is the climate alarmist contingent that made endless predictions of runaway global warming. Scientific skeptics — which you are certainly not — know better. Runaway global warming is nonsense.
You are just a noob who only recently stumbled in here from Pseudo-skeptical Pseudo-science. I’ve been learning here since this site began, and from your comments it’s clear that the only information you have is misinformation.

@ D.B. Stealey / March 2, 2013 at 3:06 pm
“There, in his own words: CO2 is a satanic gas. Could Phobos be any less credible?”
Well, I could agree on these words from Phobos:
The uncertainties lie in the *rest* of the calculation: aerosols, black soot, clouds, feedbacks, deep ocean dynamics. Except for the first two — which are negative feedbacks — there is little man can do about climate change unless CO2 is reduced, or scrubbed and sequestered. That’s the bottom line.
Like Wamron says: “these are basic undergraduate principles of science”

As usual van Etten links to a series of zero baseline charts, which are inherently inaccurate. They misrepresent what is happening. The only accurate charts in a situation like that are long term trend charts.
I’ve explained the difference many times here, so I’m not inclined to waste pixels on van Etten, who wouldn’t understand it anyway.
van Etten says: ” there is little man can do about climate change unless CO2 is reduced, or scrubbed and sequestered. That’s the bottom line.”
How incredibly unscientific. There is zero measurable evidence to support such a baseless conjecture. But then, the pseudo-science crowd has no use for scientific evidence. True Belief is sufficient for their cult.

@ D.B. Stealey / March 2, 2013 at 4:54 pm
van Etten says: “whats wrong with you?”
The question, Martin, is: what is wrong with you? The longer the time scale, the better when looking at trends and correlation.
——
Stealey, get your act together, you are kidding me! lattitude comes with a graph of 10.000 years of climate change in reaction to two decennia in the last century? we are talking about the post Worldwar 2 cooling matter;
are we making a fool of ourselves?

van Etten asks: “are we making a fool of ourselves?”
The rest of us are not inclined to follow your example, Martin. Run along now back to SkS, where their head-nodders lap up your anti-science. Maybe you can pick up some new talking points; the ones you’re using are old and busted. Unlike SkS, this is the internet’s “Best Science” site.You could learn a lot here, if you would simply open your closed mind.

@ stealy,
I was just providing Don Easterbrook with some links about SO2 concentrations and the relation with warming when the SO2 started to decline; these links were just two normal American organisations, the pnl.gov and http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net

D.B. Stealey / March 2, 2013 at 5:13 pm Unlike SkS, this is the internet’s “Best Science” site;
Stealey,
yes I noticed that when I saw you publishing Monckton and Cfact stuff;
sorry that I wrote are WE making a full of ourselves?
I meant are YOU making a fool of yourself by defending lattitude’s remarks by sending the same graph to explain a multdecadal event with multimillenial tendency;
well, this I don’t buy;

D.B. Stealey / March 2, 2013 at 5:06 pm
van Etten says: ” there is little man can do about climate change unless CO2 is reduced, or scrubbed and sequestered. That’s the bottom line.”
please be accurate, I supported Phobos who said that;

No Phobos, these so called scientists are emphatically NOT doing exactly what scientists are supposed to do.
I fully agree with the philosophy that “when resultsobservations don’t agree with predictions, look around and figure out why not. Revise theory, test again.” However, that is not what these researchers are doing at all.
Climate politics aside, the abstract and press release (I am not willing to waste good money to read this paywalled paper) indicate that the objective of the study are to quantify the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km, and to attribute the contribution of volcanic and anthropogenic sources to this increase. These are interesting and potentially important questions. Unfortunately, the methodology selected to investigate the question – trying to infer aerosol layer optical depth and sources from GCM predictions – is risible.
Aerosol concentrations and optical depth are physical parameters that can be observed directly. Attempting to infer the optical depth, let alone the source of the aerosols based on predictions from GCMs that are known to be inaccurate (i.e., don’t agree with observed climate) and which include a huge number of confounding factors and poorly quantified feedback processes is useless from a scientific standpoint.

Martin van Etten says:
March 2, 2013 at 5:03 pm‘Like Wamron says: “these are basic undergraduate principles of science”’
Yes and, how many undergraduates would you trust with design of a complicated mechanism, with potential for grave injury, or worse, to themselves and others?
Undergraduate study is where they teach you basic mechanisms. Graduate work is where you learn the limits of the theory. You don’t really learn how things actually work until you start applying what they teach you in the real world – design it from scratch, experiment with it in the laboratory, and make it into a finished product for others to use.
The people on the alarmist side never had to make anything actually work. That is why they are flailing so desperately now. They bit off more than they can chew, and they are choking on their own bile. I would be lying if I said I was not enjoying the denouement. Pass the popcorn.

van Etten,
Yes, this is the internet’s “Best Science” site. If you would read the articles here you could learn a lot. Instead, you repeat the nonsense you get from blogs like RealClimate. Note that they are a small echo chamber of head nodders, with one-tenth the traffic of WUWT.
The alarmist crowd always claims to have the ‘consensus’. So by that standard, WUWT is the ‘best science’ consensus. But you don’t agree with the science here, so according to your own claims, you are wrong.
I would recommend that you start paying attention to what most commenters are saying. You could learn a lot. But your religious true belief does not allow you to understand the difference between ‘best science‘ and pseudo-science. Too bad for you.

Martin van Etten says:
…
“Well, I could agree on these words from Phobos:The uncertainties lie in the *rest* of the calculation: aerosols, black soot, clouds, feedbacks, deep ocean dynamics. Except for the first two — which are negative feedbacks — there is little man can do about climate change unless CO2 is reduced, or scrubbed and sequestered. That’s the bottom line.” (emphasis added)
———–
Seriously? If both you and Phobos acknowledge that clouds, feedbacks, and deep ocean dynamics are uncertain, then why are you arguing that AGW is real? What are you doing here trolling? I mean, you just threw the AGW baby out with the bathwater, once you acknowledge that you don’t really know how the clouds, feedbacks, and ocean dynamics are going to behave in the system. If you don’t really know, then you’re guessing that AGW is real in an important way. Is this in fact your position?
(for the record, I object to the distinction between clouds and feedbacks – clouds ~are~ feedbacks, but I don’t want to obscure the issue with details that aren’t relevant to the point I’m making, so I’m sticking with Phobos’s original phraseology).

Martin, where is the severe drop in temperature between 1940’s and 1970’s in that graph? You know, the temperature drop that was so significant that some scientists were concerned about it being a start of the next ice age? Somehow that just disappeared in the numerous GISS adjustments. Redraw the chart in your mind with the late ’70s about a half a degree cooler, and then tell me there’s still a reason to be concerned.

Interesting Martin is wanting to focus on the short term graphs rather than the long term context. Once you study the many varied Paleo Climate graphs then the context shows the 4 major warming periods since the end of the last ice age. Each warming period is not as warm as the prior one. The overall trend, sadly, is still downward towards the start of the next ice age.
The so called skeptics on this site believe in global warming. They believe in climate change.
What they do not believe in is this fictitious idea the climate is not steady state unless humans mess it up. This statement of faith is what the propaganda hockey stick was all about.
Staring at models that do not follow observations, have been falsified, relegates the warmists to the realm of faith based religion. I’m all for people believing what they want – in their personal lives. But when their beliefs affect the well being of the worlds poor to such an extent that we burn food for fuel and deny billions low cost energy, then, as often happens, these people of the new religion are by any objective definition Pure Evil!

So its a phobia, dark satanic gases leaving a black carbon fallout.
This year is young, so may laughs at the cultists of carbon so far.
Don’t you demonizers of carbon, hate it when your idiocy and lies are here for all to admire?
Given any thought to how to escape “useful idiot” branding?
Let me guess, first you never use your real names, which reflects on your integrity.
And you’re probably using your parents IP address.

Phobos
The radiative part of the calculation of climate sensitivity is among the best known parts of climate science, since it depends on quantum mechanics, which is known to be a very good theory.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seriously? From IPCC AR4 WG1 2.2:Since the TAR a number of studies have investigated the relationship between RF and climate response, assessing the limitations of the RF concept;
In fact, it also says:Figure 2.1 shows how the RF concept fits within a general understanding of climate change comprised of ‘forcing’ and ‘response’
Does a “concept” with “limitations” that results in a “general understanding” sound like they have it precisely nailed down? If so, why do they go out of their way to say: Surface forcing has quite different properties than RF and should not be used to compare forcing agents (see Section 2.8.1).
Do you even know what their definition of radiative forcing is?Ramaswamy et al. (2001) define it as ‘the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus longwave; in W m–2) at the tropopause after allowing for stratospheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, but with surface and tropospheric temperatures and state held fixed at the unperturbed values’.
Do you understand that they are defining a temperature change at the tropopause that they think will result from a change in CO2 if the troposphere and surface temperatures DON’T change? That they provide no way to extrapolate this sensitivity to an eventual surface temperature change? That their entire methodology from their relies on a linear extrapolation of the lapse rate while ignoring that this is impossible given that water vapour is the dominant ghg and is NOT uniform and so PREVENTS the possibility of a linear extrapolation being accurate? That they provide no less than FOUR different scenarios as to what MIGHT happen based on their definition?
Hey that’s not me, that’s THEM. Read it yourself:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-2.html

@john Robertson
Phobos is just a troll.
Martin van Etten runs a ‘blog’ in the Netherlands which, in essence, just translates the talking points and flawed ‘science’ on SkS.
Martin van Etten believes in global warming caused by man made CO2.
He uses the same straw man (Climate Change deniers) and other fallacies (plurium interrogationum)to advance his point of view as other ‘believers’.
He has been preaching doom and gloom on the internet since 1999.
What do you expect him to do, suddenly stop now that the tenets of his belief system are looking rather shaky?

So, if it’s not CO2, then what mechanism best correlates with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution?
I asked this question on another thread, but so far, I’ve only received the following three answers:
1) Nobody knows
2) It’s the sun (but when I asked for a graph showing the correlation, there was silence)
3) hot air from the media
So far, that doesn’t look very good from the perspective of someone who tends to get their info from encyclopedias and the like.

Evan – Good question, but you need to realize that any man-released-CO2 effect CANNOT have existed prior to 1950 timeframe.
Before that – WWII included! – there simply was not enough CO2 released by man’s activities to be affecting the world’s climate.
There are some 900+ papers listed on the Idso’s site establishing that the Little Ice age and Medieval Warming Period were global, were affecting all proxies under all conditions, and were a valid real time item. Thus, whatever is affecting climate in the long term – and EVERYBODY MUST be humble enough to admit the only thing we really can say is “We don’t know the cause of the Medieval Warming Period and Little Ice Age” – cannot be CO2.
Whatever was changing climate in the short 1973 – 1998 time period when both CO2 and temperatures were increasing “may” include CO2.
But, between 1998 and 2013, CO2 decided not to affect climate.

Evan Bedford:
“1) Nobody knows”
At least, no one knows for certain.
What we do know is that CO2 is not any more than an incidental forcing, if that.
Where do you get your misinformation from, anyway? Certainly not from WUWT articles.

Oh!?
— Was there a late reprieve issued from one of the tropical hoorah conferences where CAGWers are desperate to sign up both countries to a new emission standards and reductions? Make it less now so they aren’t forced back to the feudal age like Western Civilization?
— How is it determined that mysterious SO2 volcanic seeps are lightly puffing their emissions so high into the atmosphere?
— Surely it can not be sub surface vents. I would expect most SO2 would be scrubbed out long before the bubbles surface.

“…Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet…”

How?
— Freakish CAGW formed thunderstorms blast the heavy little buggers far above normal T-Storm heights?
— Planes drag the volcanic aerosols higher with them?
— The heavier SO2 gas molecule floats higher than lighter gas molecules?
— Perhaps SO2 reacts with water to form H2SO4, a liquid? Is there any way to distinguish H2SO4 reflectivity from water droplets or clous surfaces at that low altitude? If the SO2 molecule found H2O molecules to play with in this study are they suggesting that H2SO4 aqueous molecules are more reflective; even when surrounded by H2O playgroup buddies?

“…Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000, which is significant for Earth’s climate…”

— Perhaps they mispoke; but as already mentioned above (Tom J.), I read this as stating that the stratosphere layer between 20 – 30km is either getting clearer or larger in depth or both. After all; optical quartz, optical glass both refer to the clearest transparent material.
— If the optical layers cleared or got larger; isn’t this result a desired one?
— If they mispoke; then exactly what increased, from what to what and what is the total now versus what was the initial level? 4% is a useless phrase without the qualifiers!
— — This statement also needs verification from direct observations. As the satellite era enabled better measurements, (step changes), and constantly undergo improvements, (more step changes); their short history invalidates global climate effects until a number of cycles are observed.

“…Contributions to this increase both from moderate volcanic eruptions and from enhanced coal burning in Asia have been suggested…”

Say what!?
— I thought Asia was already given a pass, (noted above). Is this some sort of temporary reprieve? Sign them up, gaff them securely, then punish?
— What moderate volcanoes? It takes a severe eruption, (Volcano explosivity index (VEI) scale 4 or greater) to actually push ejecta to those altitudes; Eyjafjallajökull, Mount St. Helens and Pinatubo were the most recent ones that come to mind. Unless of course the researchers manage to find a way that SO2 winkles it’s way higher in the new CAGW physics…

“…Current observations are insufficient to attribute the contribution of the different sources. Here we use a global climate model coupled to an aerosol microphysical model to partition the contribution of each….”

Oh, of course! This is the proverbial “We don’t know, so we’re making it up” model. Taken as stated and I believe they meant in the abstract; this sentence comes across as stating that they adjusted the models till they got the result they wanted. They sat. They played with models. They are sure failing to conquer.
— Asia was given a bye for the moment, so instead they’re blaming the mysterious moderate volcanos. Surely everyone will just accept that statement without qualm…
Outside of the desperate IPCC intention to overwhelm good science with bad science for the AR, (quantity instead of quality, feed them and they’ll multiply), unless the abstract’s description of the paper is terribly incorrect; this is a perfect example of allowing them to stuff their feet and posteriors into their mouths.
I do wonder how much this research actually cost versus how much funding they received.

Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm
“So, if it’s not CO2, then what mechanism best correlates with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution?
I asked this question on another thread, but so far . . .”
If the hypothesis fails the test of observation it is the responsibility of the maker to fix it or abandon it. It is not, repeat not, the responsibility of a person pointing out the failure to fix it for you. Here’s the idea:
One example was on Climate Audit (CA) five or six years ago and went (something) like this: Suppose ‘JC’ as a mining engineer with impeccable credentials you are requested by XYZ Mining Co. to investigate claims by Evan Bedford Gold Co.’s flamboyant chief executive that his latest find is showing an abundance of Gold. So ‘JC’ investigates using personal experience, scientific principles, and data manipulation skills – and then tells XYZ not to make an offer on Evan’s property because the find has been overblown or out-right faked. Upon hearing this, Evan says “Well then, if you are so smart, tell me where I can find a rich Gold deposit!” — squawks, stomps foot, slams door.

“Martin van Etten says:
March 2, 2013 at 11:14 am
……here is another link about SO2 emissions:http://www.pnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-14537.pdf”
If you look at the graphs you’ll see a major shift of SO2 production from Europe/North America to East and Central Asia. If one perturbs a chaotic system so significantly the effect on global climate will be the result of a warming tendency in Europe and North America and a cooling tendency in East and Central Asia plus the unpredictable chaotic component. But as most of the thermometers back then were North America / Europe based, I’d expect to see a “global” warming tendancy in the record and as the overall SO2 falls a continuing warming tendancy until SO2 levels flatten.
Whatever the net effect, taking account of all other drivers, the recent slowing/stopping of warming is not surprising but it is indicative of a significantly smaller component to warming from anthrogenic CO2 than the models are programmed to show. The next 10 years will be very interesting.

Phobos says:
March 2, 2013 at 2:30 pmThe uncertainties lie in the *rest* of the calculation: aerosols, black soot, clouds, feedbacks, deep ocean dynamics. Except for the first two — which are negative feedbacks — there is little man can do about climate change unless CO2 is reduced, or scrubbed and sequestered. That’s the bottom line.
The problem with the models is that they give much more weight at the positive feedbacks than at the effect of CO2 itself. Physics show that a CO2 doubling (from 280 to 560 ppmv) gives an increase of temperature of some 0.9°C without feedbacks. That is all. The rest of the 1.5-4.5°C range of the models, according to the IPCC is from the feedbacks. In which case clouds are seen as a positive feedback, while cloud specialists all say that clouds are a negative feedback: more water vapour gives more (low level) clouds, thus more cooling. The other turn knob to tune models with reality are aerosols. While SO2 gives cooling aerosols, black/brown soot (as over large parts of India) gives warming aerosols. The full effect of the mixture of both may be cooling, warming or zero. But all models use aerosols as cooling, or they can’t explain the 1945-1975 cooler period. See the graphs at with my comment at #14.
Without the overblown feedbacks and the overblown impact of aerosols (both natural and human made) in the models, there is not the slightest reason to curb CO2 emissions for their effect on climate, even a doubling gives a mostly benign moderate warming…

Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pmSo, if it’s not CO2, then what mechanism best correlates with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution?
There have been other warm periods during the Holocene, the last one being the MWP, which was about .5C warmer. What do you suppose could have caused them?
The null hypothesis is and always has been that the warming is natural. Whatever slight warming effect man has had simply can not be distinguished amidst the climate noise. In addition, much of the recorded warming, perhaps as much as half, is due to a highly flawed system of temperature measurement.

So as it is now agreed that there has been no significant global warming for 15 years and we now have been given a solid reason for that being the case – the preceding claims of severe weather being caused by warming they now agree didn’t happen must be false.
Not at all. You see, roughly three or four years ago, when it became clear that there was a serious problem emerging with the AGW story they had been telling, specifically that there had been no warming since the 1997-1998 super ENSO and basically flat temperatures for some 8 years preceding that as well, they changed from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”.
Global warming (anthropogenic or not) is in a sense a falsifiable claim. If it fails to warm, it falsifies all predictions of warming whatever their collective cause was supposed to be. Climate change, OTOH, is impossible to falsify because the norm is for the climate to “change”, at least somewhere on the globe, all of the time. It is a dynamical system with chaos and nonlinearities and both slowly and rapidly varying drivers and feedbacks and multiple timescales. Physicists since Gleick have blamed storms like Sandy on the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil, to the point where it is now something of a standing joke in human society. And silly as it is, blaming it on any specific human activity is precisely as reasonable an assessment of the situation as blaming it on a Brazillian Butterfly. I personally caused Sandy to occur when and how it did when I farted in third grade. You contributed to the cause when you belched in 1979 after dinner without covering your mouth. If we hadn’t done these things, the storm would never have happened where and when and how it did.
Of course some other storm, at some other time and place and with some other structure would have happened, because storms happen as the Earth gains summertime heat and starts to shed it in the fall, per hemisphere. And blaming it on Climate Change, where they have become especially subtle and left off the “Anthropogenic” bit because that is falsifiable at this point and besides, it is understood by all Greens and True Believers, is entirely safe. What does the claim even mean? That dynamical phenomena are caused by dynamics in a dynamical system, and that humans, as dynamical entities dynamically contributing dynamical perturbations that are far more powerful than any silly Butterfly, are a dynamical causal factor in the dynamical evolution of the Earth’s dynamical climate system?
Yeah, right. Falsify that!
Now, hand over your money you dynamical perturber you, because Sandy was your fault. Your mother told you to cover your mouth when you belch…
rgb

I suggest Anthony run a post on the differences in language used in press-releases promoting up-coming or recently published scientific articles, as compared to what the articles or even the abstracts actually say or are ‘interpreted’ as meaning. There is often a yawning chasm between the two.
In medical sciences, many know that a modestly interesting paper is often inappropriately described as a “break-through”. It is predictable to the point of being boring.
The hype will get found out by clinical trials, if it even gets that far.
Why does it take so long for the same realization to dawn in climate-change science. Discuss.

Phobos says:
March 2, 2013 at 2:30 pm…………………………..The uncertainties lie in the *rest* of the calculation: aerosols, black soot, clouds, feedbacks, deep ocean dynamics. Except for the first two — which are negative feedbacks — ……………

Show me where the IPCC or NASA have “Revise theory” on AGW?
Why do you think Co2 is a Satanic gas?
Your last bit which I have bolded makes you sound like a sceptic.
Here they are again:
“aerosols,
black soot,
clouds,
feedbacks,
deep ocean dynamics”
Isn’t this the problem with the models as you have stated there are “uncertainties”? It even baffles the experts.
Let’s take a closer look at CO2 the “satanic gas“.
Effects of higher C02 on crops:

For the majority of greenhouse crops, net photosynthesis increases as CO2 levels increase from 340–1,000 ppm (parts per million). Most crops show that for any given level of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), increasing the CO2 level to 1,000 ppm will increase the photosynthesis by about 50% over ambient CO2 levels.http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm

The authors claim that they have an empirical basis for their view:
“Observations suggest that the optical depth of the stratospheric aerosol layer between 20 and 30 km has increased 4–10% per year since 2000… ”
I’m puzzled about why they use the word “suggest”. Did they figure that one out or not–but let that go. If there has been such an increase in the past dozen years it’s worth some study. Also puzzled about why they exonerate India and China. As many commenters here save “suggested” vulcanism has been rather constant, at least since Pinatubo, so one would be looking for new input, and that means, mostly, Asia.
There is a rich irony in that all those reports of organisms suffering from global warming in the past two decades must be wrong if not foolish, since there has been so little warming, but in principle there’s nothing wrong with looking at confounding variables (like sulfur dioxide) before tossing a promising theory.

vukcevic / March 3, 2013 at 12:50 am
You are wrong. They are de-trended data, as clearly stated.http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sun-Earth.htm
——————————————–
I still do’t agree, the ”Monckton standstill” is not clearly visible in your graph;

Martin van Etten says:
March 2, 2013 at 9:05 am
Ian W / March 2, 2013 at 6:06 am “And now we are told that the reason there has been NO global warming for 15 years is because of volcanic aerosols?”
I admit, its difficult to understand: global warming is allready 15 years on the highest level of modern times, in the same time, there seems to be no accelaration (increase) for the moment;
this misunderstanding is caused because peole like Monckton and Morano to name a few show only the years with standstill, and not what was before;

Actually, it is people not showing what went before 1750 that have a misunderstanding. Perhaps if the temperatures back to say 10,000 years ago were shown there would be less ‘misunderstanding’.

I would like to ask Martin van Etten exactly what it would take to falsify his belief in catastrophic AGW? [It must be ‘catastrophic’, because otherwise there is no point in arguing over a minuscule, inconsequential AGW effect.]
So, what are your exact numbers, van Etten? What would falsify your belief? Post your numbers here.
I think that van Etten’s belief system is completely emotion-based, and therefore it is unalterable: CO2 is an evil, Satanic gas, and no scientific evidence could possibly change Martin’s True Belief.
Prove me wrong, van Etten. Post your numbers here. What would it take to falsify your belief?

@Tom_R says: / March 2, 2013 at 6:01 pmhttp://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
“Martin, where is the severe drop in temperature between 1940′s and 1970′s in that graph?”
there is some decline visible in this graph, besides that, the coldest winter I remember, the winter of 1963 is the coldest point of that timeperiode;
I don’t think we expected a severe drop in temperature; since the fifties we expected a temperature rise (wich did not come until end of the seventies after the SO2 legislation was effectuated)

Ian W / March 3, 2013 at 6:14 am
“Perhaps if the temperatures back to say 10,000 years ago were shown there would be less ‘misunderstanding’.
maybe I should remember you to the subject of this discussion: “Aerosols from Moderate Volcanos Now Blamed for Global Warming Hiatus” (headline of the article above)

These studies are based on the hybridization of two “models”: WACCM and CARMA.
WACCM stands for “Wacked-Out Climate Model”
CARMA speaks for itself and suggests: The Warm-earthers and Carboxyphobes will one day face the Bad Karma generated by their ultimate contribution to the degradation of human life on the planet, most notably of those poor in developing countries who have faced and are suffering through a lower food supply (food is being converted inefficiently to fuel) and reduced energy caused by prohibition of varied efficient forms of energy generation in their countries.
Pox on both their houses! May their tribes and grants decrease!

van Etten says:
“first answer my other questions”
No. You keep dodging the question. The fact is that you cannot give an answer because you will be proven wrong. Stop playing your word games: what, specifically, would it take to falsify catastrophic AGW? Post your numbers here.
And regarding the fact that WUWT is the internet’s “Best Science” site, van Etten complains: “that indeed is an incredible but disturbing result”
It is not ‘incredible’, it is the plain truth. And it is only ‘disturbing’ to the scientifically illiterate.

These “studies” were funded by the following:“The research for the new study was funded in part through a NOAA/ ESRL-CIRES Graduate Fellowship to Neely. The National Science Foundation and NASA also provided funding for the research project. The Janus supercomputer is supported by NSF and CU-Boulder and is a joint effort of CU-Boulder, CU Denver and NCAR.”
NASA and NOAA again. (not to cast any dispersion or derision [/sarc]). I also wonder to myself what if any “perks” have been offered by the People’s Republic of China?…Just sayin’ — not knowin’!

Well, I suggest that you study the NASA/GISS/Hansen plots some more.
The claim of global warming is based entirely on the assertion that the data processing output labelled “global average temperature” is known to with +/- 0.1C back in 1880 [or today for that matter].

Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm
“Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm
So, if it’s not CO2, then what mechanism best correlates with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution?
I asked this question on another thread, but so far, I’ve only received the following three answers:……….”

Just 2 points:
1) It is down to those who make the ‘theories’ to provide the evidence and defend their work / claim. Sceptics don’t have to explain, defend or provide any evidence – if they choose not to. Think about this example for a second. Someone puts in a paper for peer review. It is rejected due to a flaw. The researcher who submitted the paper then asks the reviewers can they think of a better explanation. Such a person will never be taken seriously again
2) Maybe Dr. James Hansen can help out with your question:

Dr. James Hansen – NASA – June 16, 2000
Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario
“A common view is that the current global warming rate will continue or accelerate. But we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as chlorofluorocarbons, CH4, and N2O, not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols, the positive and negative climate forcings of which are partially offsetting. The growth rate of non-CO2 GHGs has declined in the past decade. If sources of CH4 and O3 precursors were reduced in the future, the change in climate forcing by non-CO2 GHGs in the next 50 years could be near zero. Combined with a reduction of black carbon emissions and plausible success in slowing CO2 emissions, this reduction of non-CO2 GHGs could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming, reducing the danger of dramatic climate change. Such a focus on air pollution has practical benefits that unite the interests of developed and developing countries. However, assessment of ongoing and future climate change requires composition-specific long-term global monitoring of aerosol properties.”http://www.pnas.org/content/97/18/9875.full

The radiative part of the calculation of climate sensitivity is among the best known parts of climate science, since it depends on quantum mechanics, which is known to be a very good theory.

Climate models are not derived from first principles of physics, such as the Stefan-Boltzmann Law for blackbodies, but are rather mostly consist of curve fitting data + energy balance + transport.
Btw, a blackbody calculation gives that earth’s average global temperature as 6C.

Martin van Etten,
Can you give Stealey an answer. Ducking and diving makes you look bad. If it’s science then what would falsify AGW in your eyes. Example, 5 years of cooling, 100 years of cooling, just what would it take and give numbers. You can’t continue on this thread with any credibility if you fail to answer.

Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm
“Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm
So, if it’s not CO2, then what mechanism best correlates with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution?
I asked this question on another thread, but so far, I’ve only received the following three answers:……….”

Here is another suggestion from Dr. James Hansen of NASA which might help. 😉

2003
Soot climate forcing via snow and ice albedos
Abstract
Plausible estimates for the effect of soot on snow and ice albedos (1.5% in the Arctic and 3% in Northern Hemisphere land areas) yield a climate forcing of +0.3 W/m2 in the Northern Hemisphere. The “efficacy” of this forcing is ∼2, i.e., for a given forcing it is twice as effective as CO2 in altering global surface air temperature. This indirect soot forcing may have contributed to global warming of the past century, including the trend toward early springs in the Northern Hemisphere, thinning Arctic sea ice, and melting land ice and permafrost. If, as we suggest, melting ice and sea level rise define the level of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, then reducing soot emissions, thus restoring snow albedos to pristine high values, would have the double benefit of reducing global warming and raising the global temperature level at which dangerous anthropogenic interference occurs. However, soot contributions to climate change do not alter the conclusion that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been the main cause of recent global warming and will be the predominant climate forcing in the future.http://www.pnas.org/content/101/2/423.short

Helpful? The science is not settled. Look, I could go on and on causing you guys great confusion and stress but that would be inhumane. The problem is not with sceptics but in the models.

Theo Goodwin says:
“Hats off to Bofill, Wamron, Shaw, Stealey, and all you older guys who know who you are. Looks like there is no need for me to post any longer. That’s good. (Don’t spend too much time on the trolls.)”
Man! NOOOOOO! Dont dump the burden here I cant take it, I is only in me fifties!
However, I DO have a general “advisory” from my “older” opinion. It seems mostresponses to the trolls tend two ways: either abrupt dismissal in terms only symmetrically echoing the AGW folks themselves or getting into technical minutiae.
The first type of comment I understand and sometimes, I admit, add myself. But the second kind, the technically literate (I said technically LITERATE, not its opposite, though the result isthe same) kind is actually the more problematic. Why? Because it is only by engaging in an nfinite regression through layers of sub-tending technicality that pseudo-science can survive by its sophistry and wits rather than being exposed as unscientific. This much was explained by Imre Lakatosh in the Seventies.
To expose pseudo-science it is necessary to 1) refuse to be drawn into discussion of sub-tending sophistry of a technical nature and 2) keep pointing out the fundamental, generic flaws in the process of thought exhibited by the pseudo-scientist (or troll).
The problem is that so many of the commenters here are technically knowlledgeable and are drawn too easily into technical regression. YOU MUST STOP YOURSELF. Your knowledge is wasted in such discussion. In fact, it adds legitimacy to the other gangspseudo-science by drawing your input.
Just keep repeating the basic indisputable mantra: Nothing is “scienctific” that has no null hypothesis.
Most trolls aint the wit to understand squat. It doesnt matter, its the non-posting readers you need to think of.

Note all MARTIN VAN ETTEN
quoted one line of my earlier entry out of context to make it appear I approved of some twaddle that was exactly the opposite of what I wrote.
MARTIN VAN ETTEN…thats called traduction…its the nastiest, lowest, scummiest, vilest, ass-kicking warranting form of deception that it is possible to perpetrate. Its the sort of thing that in previous eras would warrant a duel.
MARTIN VAN ETTEN …would you care to have a meet!

Wamron says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:03 am
Very well said. Trolls are trying to become Tar Babies, though they might not be conscious of that. In practical terms, they are here to make noise and to distract from serious debate and conversation. Stay away from them. Heed the saying: Do not feed the trolls.
Your contributions have been very good. Just focus on your own material.

Martin van Etten says:
March 3, 2013 at 6:38 am
there is some decline visible in this graph, besides that, the coldest winter I remember, the winter of 1963 is the coldest point of that timeperiode;
I don’t think we expected a severe drop in temperature; since the fifties we expected a temperature rise (wich did not come until end of the seventies after the SO2 legislation was effectuated)

The concern over cooling was in the 1970’s, not around 1963. The decline in the GISS graph is less than 0.1 degree. Such a miniscule amount would not have anyone concerned about cooling. There was a real noticeable drop in global temperatures in the 1970’s. There is historical support for that. Yet it does not show up in the GISS plot of temperatures. Of course the values from GISS have been adjusted from the actual raw measurements. When the numbers after adjustment disagree with historical records, I have to conclude that the error is in the adjustments.

SO2 is pretty reactive and IMO, precipitates out as sulphate too quickly in the troposphere to be of much consequence. That’s why the really energetic volcanoes are the mechanism responsible for getting it to the stratosphere where it can be of some significance.
Something that is overlooked, and that I can’t find any emission ratios of, is Carbonyl Sulphide. (OCS). It has a really long stay time in the troposphere and can be carried around on the large scale circulation. When hit with 270 to 200 nm light, it dissociates and can then be converted to sulphate. I think this is how the background aerosol layer remains persistent. The only place that you find that 270 nm and 200 nm (UV-C) is up in the stratosphere.
Not trained in this stuff, and it’s just an opinion.

Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm“So, if it’s not CO2, then what mechanism best correlates with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution?”
This is a loaded question, as it implicitly asserts that CO2 does correlate with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution. It does not.
Both increase, but the odds of both moving in the same direction are only 50/50. A coin toss. Other than that superficial similarity, there is no agreement between the series.
However, the rise in temps does correlate with acceleration in CO2. This relationship contradicts the hypothesis that CO2 is driving temperature. As a causative relationship, it would require that temperatures respond only to the rate of change of CO2, regardless of the absolute level of CO2,. which is, of course, absurd.
I hardly expect this to make an impression on you. As a journalist, it is likely enough that you have trouble with fractions, let alone any deeper mathematics. It is unlikely that calculus is even remotely within the realm of your experience. You are merely the court jester, playing the fool and cheering on your team while jeering at the opposition. It is a pathetic performance.

Tom_R says:
March 3, 2013 at 10:19 am
Are you saying that anthropogenic SO2 outcompetes or swamps all natural sulfur emissions from all the world’s tectonic boundary volcanic, sea algal, decay, forest fires, and anaerobic emissions, etc.? I would guess not even a tenth, maybe not a hundredth part. [notwithstanding myriad incestuously cited “reports” that say that human sources comprise 95% of atmospheric sulfur emissions, which I find patently absurd].
Of course, the paper’s position is not a testable hypothesis, reiterating one of Wamron’s many salient points. To restate another of his points—us “skeptics” (AKA, basic scientists) don’t need to carry the burden of scientific proof.
My suggestion for the authors of the paper: find a scientific control to compare the premise, by figuring a way to shut down volcanoes for a year or ten. Then turn them on again. Then measure. Presto! A real scientific paper. (The undersea vents may be a little more problematic, as well as all the other sources).

Martin van Etten says: (@vukcevic)http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sun-Earth.htm
I still don’t agree, the ”Monckton standstill” is not clearly visible in your graph;
And you are still wrong. It says Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and North Hemisphere (de-trended) Temperatures. Do you know what you are looking at? Go and plot the data 1880 to 2011, calculate and remove the trend, then you might reconsider accuracy of your statements.

Evan Bedford:
Hundreds of thousands of undersea volcanoes recently discovered. Scientists cannot even quantify their emissions, but since the oceans cover more than 70% of the planet, we can be certain that natural sulfer emissions far exceed anything that human activity can produce.
Why not publish this fact, and at least pretend to be something other than a demonizer of harmless, beneficial “carbon” [by which the alarmist cult means CO2, a tiny trace gas. <–You probably didn't know that].

Jimbo says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:04 am
“1) It is down to those who make the ‘theories’ to provide the evidence and defend their work / claim.
2) Maybe Dr. James Hansen can help out with your question:
Dr. James Hansen – NASA – June 16, 2000
Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario
“A common view is that the current global warming rate will continue or accelerate. But we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as chlorofluorocarbons, CH4, and N2O, not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols, the positive and negative climate forcings of which are partially offsetting.” ”
I think the key word is “mainly”. Here is what Hanson also wrote in the paper:
“Forcings for specific GHGs differ by as much as several percent from values we estimated earlier: CO2 (−1%), CH4 (+2%), N2O (−3%), chlorofluorocarbon 11 (CFC-11) (+6%), and CFC-12 (+8%).”
I don’t see any reason for complacency.
As for the evidence for AGW, there is always the trapped bubbles in the ice, showing the relationship between cO2 and temps for many millenia. The warming may have come first, due to planetary perturbations, etc, but the feedback relationship is clearly present. So the question remains. The science for the last 187 years has put forth co2 as a significant greenhouse gas. There is plenty of evidence for it. So I’m still waiting to hear what — if not co2 — is responsible for all the warming over the last 150 years.

D.B. Stealey says:
March 3, 2013 at 12:00 pm
“Hundreds of thousands of undersea volcanoes recently discovered. Scientists cannot even quantify their emissions, but since the oceans cover more than 70% of the planet, we can be certain that natural sulfer emissions far exceed anything that human activity can produce.
Why not publish this fact, and at least pretend to be something other than a demonizer of harmless, beneficial “carbon” [by which the alarmist cult means CO2, a tiny trace gas. <–You probably didn't know that]."
Why don't you publish it, overturn the paradigm and win a Nobel Prize?

Bart says:
“I hardly expect this to make an impression on you. As a journalist, it is likely enough that you have trouble with fractions, let alone any deeper mathematics. It is unlikely that calculus is even remotely within the realm of your experience. You are merely the court jester, playing the fool and cheering on your team while jeering at the opposition. It is a pathetic performance.”
I’m hardly a journalist. I get paid $25 about once a month for the stuff I write, which works out to far less than minimum wage. I do, however, have a BSc in Forestry and a CET in Civil Engineering. So I know a bit about math. And if you have any problems with the numbers in my columns, you can always send me a polite e-mail to correct me.

Bubbagyro…I note your sarcasm but they dont even need to do that.
All they need to do is take these variables (SO2 or any other blather they might want to adduce) into account when proposing their hypothesis. If they fairly acknowledge and offer quantities for these variables in advance they will not have to blather retrospectively.
Of course, that poses two problems: Firstly it would not sell AGW well to declare a prediction that there will be a long cooling period (had they predicted this), whether because of SO2 or any other factor …they only want to say the heating will continue. Secondly, once they have incorporated these variables into their predictions and they STILL fail to predict actual events, then they will have no options to blather about retrospectively.
Of course, if they were confident that they were right…then they would not need to worry about the latter prospect. Their predictions would confirm their hypothesis and we would be forced to acknowledge this.
That they appear willing to forego that prospect of totally convicing “proof” offers an insight into “where they are at” in their “ideation”.

(hosed my italics, reposting, please delete Mark Bofill March 3, 2013 at 1:40 pm)
Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 12:54 pm
As for the evidence for AGW, there is always the trapped bubbles in the ice, showing the relationship between cO2 and temps for many millenia. The warming may have come first, due to planetary perturbations, etc, but the feedback relationship is clearly present. So the question remains. The science for the last 187 years has put forth co2 as a significant greenhouse gas. There is plenty of evidence for it. So I’m still waiting to hear what — if not co2 — is responsible for all the warming over the last 150 years.
———
Evan, help me out with this if you would and if you know; I’ve gone looking into this repeatedly and I’ve never found a satisfactory answer.
When you refer to the trapped bubbles in ice, and you realize that warming came first, and knowing that atmospheric CO2 increases are going to follow changes in temperature, can you explain to me how temperature increases due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 are supposed to look different from temperature increases due to some other agency? What’s the trick that allows us to uniquely attribute the paleo temperature increase to CO2?
See, if scientists today had an extremely precise notion of climate sensitivity, of what temperature increase to expect from a doubling of CO2, then I’d be willing to buy that as a method of attributing the warming in the past to the CO2. They could say, ‘hey, look at this data. CO2 doubled here, and temperature increased by X there.’ But scientists don’t appear to have the first darn clue, except to suggest a full 3C range of possibilities from 1.5 to 4.5C as likely. Heck, there are scientists can be found on both sides that think climate sensitivity is outside even that wide range. So, lacking that, exactly how does one go about demonstrating that a feedback relationship is clearly present in the paleo data?
This is an honest question and not necessarily an argument, and I’d be delighted to learn something today if anyone has a decent answer. I don’t even care if you don’t think the answer is correct at the end of the day in fact, I’d still love to hear whatever the justification for this thinking is supposed to be.
BTW – you can put me in the ‘don’t know what’s causing the warming’ category. Lack of another explanation isn’t a persuasive argument for CO2 in my book.

Evan Bedford says:
“Why don’t you publish it, overturn the paradigm and win a Nobel Prize?”
As you can see, it has already been published. I am just opening your eyes.
And:
“I don’t see any reason for complacency.”
Translation: “But what if…!” That is emotion, not science.
Evan Bedford, I would like to explain some basic scientific facts. If you have an open mind, they will alter your world view. If not, then you have a religion, and nothing will change your beliefs.
You say, “I’m still waiting to hear what — if not co2 — is responsible for all the warming over the last 150 years.” That is the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy: ‘Since I can’t think of anything else, then CO2 must be the reason!’ Let me walk you through the situation:
First, something unknown forced the planet into one of the coldest episodes of the entire 10,700 year Holocene: the Little Ice Age [LIA]. Since then, the planet has been recovering — naturally — from that anomaly. CO2 had nothing to do with the natural recovery. How do we know that?
We know that CO2 had nothing to do with the warming because the rising temperature trend has remained at about 0.35ºC per century, whether CO2 was low, or high. If CO2 had any effect, then global warming would be rapidly accelerating. It isn’t.
In fact, the long term rising temperature trend has ben decelerating [the green trend line]. And global warming has stalled over the past decade or more. If CO2 had the claimed effect, global temperatures would be accelerating. But they are not.
The mistaken belief is that changes in CO2 cause changes in temperature. That is wrong. In fact, ∆T causes ∆CO2. That chart clearly shows the true cause and effect, and it holds not only on yearly time scales, but on time scales of hundreds of millennia. Are you following the logic so far?
Let’s recap:
1. There are no scientific measurements showing that rises in CO2 cause rises in temperature. None at all. The only empirical measurements show that changes in temperature cause changes in CO2; not vice-versa.
2. The long term global warming trend has remained within tight parameters for hundreds of years, regardless of atmospheric CO2 levels. CO2 simply does not matter to any measurable degree. AGW may exist, but if so it is such a minuscule effect that it can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
3. ∆T causes ∆CO2, not vice-versa. There is no real world data showing that CO2 causes global warming. That remains a conjecture. The only empirical evidence available shows that changes in CO2 are caused by changes in temperature.
When someone writes in the manner that you do, it is clear that these scientific facts cause cognitive dissonance, and they will be rejected. Belief systems are notoriously difficult to overcome. I trust that other readers will look at the scientific evidence, and decide based on that.
The biosphere is starved of CO2. We need more, not less. And even arch-alarmist Phil Jones agrees that previous rises in global warming have had identical slopes, indicating that CO2 has had no effect.
You can sink back into your comfortable belief system, or you can accept the mountains of evidence proving that CO2 has little effect on temperature. The choice is yours.

Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 12:54 pmAs for the evidence for AGW, there is always the trapped bubbles in the ice, showing the relationship between cO2 and temps for many millenia. The warming may have come first, due to planetary perturbations, etc, but the feedback relationship is clearly present.
Evan, as you know, the relationship is that temperature changes caused CO2 changes over some 800 kyears, with a lag of several hundreds of years during glacial-interglacial transitions and several thousands of years in the opposite direction.
The problem is that there is a huge overlap of temperature and CO2 changes during most transitions, which makes it impossible to know if there is a feedback of CO2 on temperature. With one exception: the end of the previous interglacial, the Eemian, where temperatures were already back at a minimum (and ice sheets at a maximum), before CO2 levels started to drop.
The drop of 40 ppmv CO2 over a period of some 5000 years had no measurable effect on temperature or ice sheet formation. Thus if there is a feedback from CO2 on temperature, it is very modest… See:http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html

Hi Mark. I just looked up paleoclimate, co2, temperature, and correlation on google and found these:http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.htmlhttp://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
I’m guessing that the graphs would demonstrate a fairly good correlation between temps and co2. As for some other agency being the cause, I would guess that even though planetary perturbation is the initial trigger, its continuing behaviour wouldn’t look anything like the graphs at all (in other words, it triggers the feedback event, but the feedback event then outruns it, so it doesn’t continue to contribute to it in a signficant way).

Evan Bedford says:
March 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm
So, if it’s not CO2, then what mechanism best correlates with the rise in temps since the industrial revolution?

The word “mainly” has been used regarding co2. I.e. Co2 is now the ‘main’ driver of climate. James Hansen said that the ‘main’ driver of the warming up to 2000 was not Co2. Now, you either accept it was or it was not. If you don’t it’s not my problem it’s between you and Dr. James Hansen.

Wamron says:
March 3, 2013 at 1:04 pm
AndMark Bofill says:
March 3, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Wamron: This does not establish causality vs. correlation, to which Bofill alludes. This is the problem with the very indirect applied sciences, especially when this science in particular has more variables than equations, an insoluble conundrum. One thing is sure: without the establishment of causality, no solution to the problem can be forthcoming. Anything we try could have no effect or make things worse, especially economically.
Mark: Scripps has shown that CO2 migrates in ice, and established that rate constant. All gases migrate through solids; however Scripps showed a couple of years ago that this diffusion, albeit slow, is important over geologic time frames. CO2 diffuses under the restraints of Fick’s Laws of Diffusion. The rate is directly proportional to the initial concentration. Looking at the ice sheet as a membrane, albeit large, diffusion goes from the region of high concentration to low concentration (outside the ice). So if the concentration in the bubble is 10 times the concentration outside, then diffusion will be 10 times faster. If the concentration inside is the same as outside, then net diffusion ceases. The concentration in the bubble will always “seek” the outside concentration, if it is lower inside.
This means that, in the past, if the CO2 concentration were appreciably higher (like I figure it must have been to support huge beasties—high CO2 means the high plant growth necessary to feed the appetites of the beasts—high plant growth means higher O2 concentration, which leads to ability to deliver O2 to more distal organs to support huge animals, etc.), then it would not be measured as high today.
The diffusion would have, over long times, depleted the bubbles of previousy high CO2 concentration that ice core scientists now assume is and was a “lock box”. It is not.

Evan Bedford says:
…………………..
There is plenty of evidence for it. So I’m still waiting to hear what — if not co2 — is responsible for all the warming over the last 150 years.

Where is your “plenty of evidence for it.”? Do you know about the Little Ice Age? Once it was over, what did you expect? What was responsible for all the cooling the Little Ice Age? What caused it to end? I am waiting for your answers.
Please note my earlier points about WHO should provide evidence. It is for those who make claims about warming over natural variability,. It is not for sceptics to provide a damned thing whether you like it or not. I await your answers to my question.

Evan Bedford,
HYPOTHETICAL:
I recently submitted a paper for peer review stating that the cause of recent global warming was the Sun. It was rejected due to an error. I asked the peer reveiwers if they could think of anything else if ti wasn’t the Sun wot done it? They laughed at me.
This is what you are asking me to do. The models are flawed and you ask me to give you a reason for the rise in temperature over the last 150 years. Can you see that you have lost the plot?????? This is not the way science is done for goodness sake.

Evan Bedford,
Please show me the evidence that co2 is responsible for most of the warming of the past 150 years. BUT first note that the IPCC, to the best of my recollection, says that man’s co2 only had a discernable effect on global mean temps after around 1960. The IPCC acknowledges that some of the rise in natural.

Jimbo says:
“Where is your “plenty of evidence for it.”? Do you know about the Little Ice Age? Once it was over, what did you expect? What was responsible for all the cooling the Little Ice Age? What caused it to end? I am waiting for your answers.”
I would think that the LIA would more properly be seen as a phenomenon rather than a mechanism.

Jimbo says:
“Please show me the evidence that co2 is responsible for most of the warming of the past 150 years. BUT first note that the IPCC, to the best of my recollection, says that man’s co2 only had a discernable effect on global mean temps after around 1960. The IPCC acknowledges that some of the rise in natural.”
Sounds intriguing. Do you have a link?

Evan Bedford,
I can think of several reasons that is not comparable. For one: you are trying to equate pure CO2 with 0.00039 CO2. Not even in the same state, much less the same ball park. But nice try, and thanx for playing.
If you want credibility, produce a chart showing cause and effect, where ∆CO2 causes ∆T. Surely with the $100 billion+ spent on proving AGW over the past decade, there is at least one such chart, no?
No.

Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Hi Mark. I just looked up paleoclimate, co2, temperature, and correlation on google and found these:http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.htmlhttp://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
I’m guessing that the graphs would demonstrate a fairly good correlation between temps and co2. As for some other agency being the cause, I would guess that even though planetary perturbation is the initial trigger, its continuing behaviour wouldn’t look anything like the graphs at all (in other words, it triggers the feedback event, but the feedback event then outruns it, so it doesn’t continue to contribute to it in a signficant way).
————-
Thanks so much for your reply, I appreciate it. I’ll look at it carefully.

Evan Bedford;
I would think that the LIA would more properly be seen as a phenomenon rather than a mechanism.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Phenomenal!
Now that we have that settled, what was the mechanism that caused the phenomenon?

From Evan Bedford’s link:Changes in temperature precede changes in CO2, with a lag of around 800 years.
That is what I have been saying. On all time scales temperature leads CO2. In fact, I linked to that same chart upthread. ∆T causes ∆CO2. There are plenty of other sources showing that relationship.
Still waiting for a chart that shows ∆CO2 causes ∆T. Surely there must be at least one, no?
.
.
.
No.
.
Now, about your “pretty good fit”: that is a simple overlay. It does not show cause and effect like the chart I posted. Fact the fact that ∆T causes ∆CO2.

DB Stealey says:
“I can think of several reasons that is not comparable. For one: you are trying to equate pure CO2 with 0.00039 CO2. Not even in the same state, much less the same ball park. But nice try, and thanx for playing.”
Why would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?

The ones I showed you above your post. They show a very bad fit. Try again.
Correlation is not necessarily causation. I have grown older in the last 45 years and so have the trees in my garden. What bollocks!

bubbagyro says:
March 3, 2013 at 2:40 pmMark: Scripps has shown that CO2 migrates in ice, and established that rate constant.
The diffusion, based on measurements of remelt layers in the Siple Dome ice core shows a small migration at medium depth, which broadens the resolution from 20 to 22 years at 2.74 kyr age and from 20 to 40 years at 70 kyr age. Hardly a problem. Thus the migration over 70 kyrs only affects a few meters of ice, far from reaching the surface a few hundreds to thousands of meters above it.
Further, that is only in relative “warm”, coastal ice cores, but the migration is much lower in the far colder high altitude inland ice cores like Vostok and Dome C. If there was substantial migration, that would lead to a further smoothing of the highest levels of the interglacials (10% of the time periods), thus a reduction of the CO2/temperature ratio (at about 8 ppmv/degr.C) for each 100 kyr step back in time. But that is not observed.
You correctly say that CO2 migrates from high to low levels. Thus if you find low levels of CO2 in ice cores for some periods, either there was little or no migration, or the outside CO2 levels even were (much) lower, not higher.

Evan Bedford;
Why would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From someone who claimed up thread that they understood calculus comes this rather obvious evidence that they do not.

I am so happy you point to no less than SIX POSSIBLE CANDIDATES, yet you hint at only ONE for your recent temperature rise culprit. SIX CANDIDATES is not an answer to my question. You have failed. Try again.

Evan Bedford,
If you can give me a definitive pointer for the recent warming, then why not give me a definitive pointer to the cause of the Little Ice Age? Also a cause for its end in the 19th century? History and paleo is a pain in your asssss.

Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:32 pmWhy would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?
The mechanism remains the same, regardless of concentration, but the real atmosphere is not 100% CO2. It contains e.g. water which is a more important GHG than CO2 and already saturates several CO2 absorption bands. Further, any increase in temperature may be mitigated by clouds and poleward transport of air and water… Thus by far not comparable with an effect measured in an experiment on lab scale…

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:40 pm
You are right about that. I was thinking GYrs, not KYrs. CO2 was pretty much constant over the last KYrs, and the Vostok cores are only good for KYrs. The dinosaurs were not around thousands of years ago. We have only indirect methods (proxies) to calculate CO2 millions of years ago.

Evan Bedford;
Obviously a mechanism of some sort. Wikipedia lists 6 possible candidates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Just six possible ones huh? So you’re admitting you don’t know?
BTW, the very first graph in the article you link to shows something rather interesting. About 600 years of warming prior to the LIA, then 600 years of cooling, and then 400 years (to present) of warming. So what you are saying is you don’t know why it was warming for 600 years (don’t blame CO2, the industrial revolution didn’t start for centuries after that), you don’t know why it was cooling foir the next 600 years, you don’t know why it started warming after that for 400 years, but you are absolutely certain that the warming of the last 50 of that 1600 years is from CO2….and you want to just ignore that the warming of the last 17 years has been zero despite the highest co2 levels ever.
Do you actually look at your own evidence before you present it?

D.B. Stealey / March 3, 2013 at 6:54 am
van Etten says: “first answer my other questions”
No.
ok with me, you can’t, you won’t, you do whatever what…
science is also a discourse, if you don’t participate by answering to questions, well than the discourse is finished;

Martin van Etten,
See vukcevic’s comment of March 3, 2013 at 11:53 am
And I’m not playing your ‘questions’ game. Why? Because you have yet to give a straight answer to anyone’s questions. Your mind is made up and closed air-tight. The only reason I reply to your comments is to correct the misinformation you’re always emitting. Some readers might think you’re giving accurate information, when you’re not.

All,
Martin van Etten is the troll who, in another thread, posted a sickening video of a pig being suffocated to death in a gas chamber filled with 100% CO2. He then tried to represent this as being relevant to the climate debate.
No further discussion with this sicko is warranted IMHO.

MARTIN VAN ETTEN
You have posted since I have last, ergo you have had achance to consider my offer.
Are you a gentleman?
(Ok, thats a rhetorical qiuestion)
Will you accept my offer like a civilised man.
You say where and when and we will settle this.
Otherwise an admission and an apology will; be sufficient.

Evan Bedford,
I am waiting for you answer. What caused LIA to start? What caused LIA to end in the 19th century?
These are simple questions since you talk about temperature rise over 150 years corresponding with co2 rise. Why the wait?

Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:15 pm“This looks like a pretty good fit to me. What else is there?”
It’s an awful fit. You have denuded the time series of any discernible information besides a slowly accelerating quadratic function. The resemblance is entirely superficial.This is the real relationship. It matches across the entire frequency spectrum, both the long term trend, and the short term variation. It integrates readily and with high fidelity into the observed CO2 concentration.
Since the level of CO2 is the integral of the rate of change, the relationship shows that CO2 necessarily lags temperature, which means that the only possible significant causal relationship is temperature to CO2, and not the reverse. Furthermore, because of the uniqueness of solutions to differential equations, there is no room in the relationship for a significant human contribution. It would introduce excess curvature in the integrated output or, if the temperature relationship were deweighted to make room for it, we would no longer match the variation in the derivative. It necessarily follows that human inputs are a small portion of total flows, and are quickly sequestered, producing no significant effect on overall levels.

Ferdinand Ebglebeen;
The mechanism remains the same, regardless of concentration,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well I suppose that is technically accurate. But in the context of this discussion, I don’t think it accurately represents the physics. The effect of co2 increases is logarithmic. So, increasing CO2 from 400 ppm to 800 ppm has an effect that we can guestimate is significant, in the range of +1 degree. But increasing CO2 from 999,000 ppm to 999,400 would have an effect that we can roughly guestimate (rounding off to 9 decimal places) as… zero.
So, from my perspective, D B Stealey was quite correct that theorizing an earth atmosphere approaching 100% co2 just isn’t applicable to the discussion. In fact, anything over 800 ppm is pretty much inconsequential based on the warming that would in theory occur versus the amount of fossil fuel we’d have to burn to get there. 800 ppm gets us in theory +1 from where we are now, 1600 only gets us in theory +2. We’re only going up what, 2 to 3 ppm per year? That’s +2 degrees in 400 to 600 YEARS? And that is without considering that the +2 would not be evenly distributed, very little would show up in the tropics or at summer highs, the bulk of it would show up at high latitude winter lows.

I would argue equally firmly that trying to play a “what if there were no CO2 at all?” game is equally foolish but very, very usefully distractive.
We KNOW absolutely that life begins to die (plants cannot live successfully as we know them today) at CO2 levels much under 200 ppm.
Thus, arguing about temperatures with no CO2 is irrelevant: There has been no period in the world’s history since plants began producing oxygen from CO2 3.5 billion years ago that CO2 levels have been less than 200, and thus, trying to claim a temperature of less than zero with no CO2 tells us nothing about today’s real world.
The “logic” however in making a such a claim is that “if a little CO2 produces some warming, then a lot of CO2 must produce a lot of warming.”
Which is, admittedly, a very seductive logic if nothing else is known. And nothing else is wanted to be learned.

DavidMHoffer says:
“It is blatant attempts at cherry picking and misrepresenting the data, like your obvious see through attempt to do so here, that was one of the first clues that brought me into the skeptic camp.”
Sorry, that was my unfamiliarity with the site. No attempts at cherry-picking.

Jimbo says:
“Evan Bedford,
If you can give me a definitive pointer for the recent warming, then why not give me a definitive pointer to the cause of the Little Ice Age? Also a cause for its end in the 19th century? History and paleo is a pain in your asssss.”
There weren’t any thermometers in the LIA. Also no observatory on Mauna Loa. Also a lot of other things. That’s why scientists postulated a lot of different causes.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:56 pm
“Evan Bedford says:
March 3, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Why would the concentration invalidate the mechanism? And why is it not in the same state?
The mechanism remains the same, regardless of concentration, but the real atmosphere is not 100% CO2. It contains e.g. water which is a more important GHG than CO2 and already saturates several CO2 absorption bands. Further, any increase in temperature may be mitigated by clouds and poleward transport of air and water… Thus by far not comparable with an effect measured in an experiment on lab scale…”
The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.

Evan Bedford;
The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But the effect is logarithmic. And the cooling response at surface is exponential.
But someone with the math skills you claim would understand those implications, would you not?

davidmhoffer says:
March 3, 2013 at 6:59 pm
“Evan Bedford;
The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But the effect is logarithmic. And the cooling response at surface is exponential.
But someone with the math skills you claim would understand those implications, would you not?”
I understand that higher and higher concentrations of co2 have less and less effect on temperature. But the mechanism is there. If it wasn’t, then Arrhenius would have a slightly shorter entry in wikipedia.

D.B. Stealey says:
March 3, 2013 at 6:53 pm
“Bedford says:
“The mechanism remains the same. I thought so. Thanks for affirmation.”
Could you be any more insufferable? Dr Engelbeen has forgotten more about this subject than you will ever learn.”
I’m not sure that the vitriol is helping me to learn. There are some people on this site who simply try and get concepts across to others. And for some, it seems, that goal is a very secondary one.

davidmhoffer says:
March 3, 2013 at 6:58 pm
“Evan Bedford;
Sorry, that was my unfamiliarity with the site. No attempts at cherry-picking.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But no admission that the correlation you insisted was there, isn’t,”
The correlation is obviously there (ie, those red and green lines). But if I took the wrong data to do it with, then I apologize.

Evan Bedford;
I understand that higher and higher concentrations of co2 have less and less effect on temperature. But the mechanism is there.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Of course it is there.
How much is it?
Different question. Data suggests… not much.
Evan Bedford;
The correlation is obviously there (ie, those red and green lines). But if I took the wrong data to do it with, then I apologize.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What you should apologize for is claiming a correlation that you cannot demonstrate. When compared to global temps, there is no correlation. As I demonstrated to you. But you continue to claim otherwise, I know not why.

Evan Bedford,
You’re right, it’s easy to lump everyone together. If you are truly trying to learn, then I apologize.
But you really need to learn, and that means accepting reasonable and logical arguments. I have tried to be as clear as possible in explaining exactly why CO2 has no measurable effect.
That is not to say that CO2 has zero effect. But it is a small third order forcing, which is swamped by second order forcings — which are in turn swamped by first order forcings.
The “carbon” hype is 99% nonsense, sustained by $Billions in federal grants in addition to huge grants from scientifically illiterate billionaires and NGOs. The science does not support the carbon scare, and if the funding was not there, there would be no scare. It is a fabricated alarm that has very little basis in reality.
If you truly want to learn, pay attention to the null hypothesis: nothing observed today is unprecedented. It has all happened before, repeatedly, and when CO2 was much lower. Adding CO2 at this point produces no measurable warming, due to the diminishing returns. And a 1ºC rise in temperature would be entirely beneficial, opening up huge new swaths of farmland in places like Mongolia, Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and providing increased humidity, leading to more precipitation.
The “carbon” scare is a false alarm. Every last alarmist prediction has been falsified. Eventually, thinking people will realize that it is nothing but a self-serving scare story, sustained by money and intended to give the alarmists more political power. But it is not credible science.

@bruce cobb / March 3, 2013 at 7:01 am
we discussed this fraudulous (‘cherry-picking’) figure here:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/22/ipcc-railroad-engineer-pachauri-acknowledges-no-warming-for-17-years/
besides that, there is 0,5 degree C average continuous warming in this graph (compared with the decennia before)
@ Wamron / March 3, 2013 at 4:22 pm
I shouldn’t have used that line from your entry, you are right,I apologise, but it was also to show your hostility, and what a hostile person you are!
@ davidmhoffer / March 3, 2013 at 4:21 pm No further discussion with this sicko is warranted IMHO.
david, weren’t you the guy manipulating graphs from the IPCC and the climateprediction-project I did participate in?
was’nt that the discussion about the ‘spaghetti’graph?
did’nt you admit that you do not read scientific articles?
and didn’t you say that you are enthousiast about the rising of the CO2 concentration?
I told you there that we are not amused here about sea level rising too much and being drowned eventualy;
you have to tell the people here the whole story and not leaving out your own nasty part, please be correct;
@ stealey
maybe you remember my earlier questions about arctic sea ice (in the Pachauri-matter);
after you said some nonsense I asked you wether you are famiiar with the work of Kinnard and Wieslaw Maslowski;
I never got – not even a beginning of – an answer,stealey, so dont start / continue blaming me;

Martin van Etten says:
March 3, 2013 at 6:38 am
I don’t think we expected a severe drop in temperature; since the fifties we expected a temperature rise (wich did not come until end of the seventies after the SO2 legislation was effectuated)

Martin, the post-war so-called aerosol effect is JUNK. To demonstrate this you need access to the GISS Zonal dataset (Land & Ocean). Now consider the following
1. Industrial aerosols are relatively short-lived in the atmosphere. The vast majority of aerosols are ‘rained out’ within a few days – or weeks at the most.
2. For reason given in (1) any effect that aerosols have on climate is “regionally specific”. This is a fact acknowledged by many cliamte researchers – including Mann & Jones (2004 – Section 5.1.4).
3. Given these facts post-1945 cooling should have been most noticeable in the industrialised mid-latitiude regions in the NH. It wasn’t. Cooling in the NH mid-latitiudes (See GISS Zonal data for 44N-64N) was no different to the global average.
4. Cooling was most pronounced in the ARCTIC (64N-90N). Here the rate of cooling was more than 4 times that of any other region.
5. While it’s true that some aersosols will find their way up to the arctic their effect on that region is not one of cooling. Study after study concludes that aerosols result in WARMING in the Arctic via a phenomenon known as Arctic Haze (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_haze ).
The distribution of cooling trends does not support the aerosol hypothesis.
Also recall that point (1) says that aerosols are short lived, i.e. they do not accumulate over time. This means that in the first year of cooling a massive pulse of aerosols must have been emitted which totally reversed the long established warming trend and set in motion the cooling trend. That massive pulse would need to be repeated year on year to replace the aerosols that had been washed out of the atmosphere. Volcanos eject aerosols high into the stratosphere so their effect is longer lasting but the effect of even the largest volcanos only lasts a year ot two.

@ John Finn
Your answer crossed my message that I want a time-out from some hostile and insulting people here; since you have a reasonable entry I will answer:
Your point 4 “Cooling was most pronounced in the ARCTIC (64N-90N). Here the rate of cooling was more than 4 times that of any other region.” must be arctic amplification because of albedo and so on;
Neely is about volcano-aerosols; in the time concerned (fifties until eighties) scientists talked about ‘dirt’ and SO2;
personnaly I remember the acid-rain and the forest dying of Scandinavia for instance, what means that SO2 / H2SO4 stayed long enough in the atmosphere to go from industrial centra in Western-Europe (London / Rotterdam) to do harm in Scandinavia;

MARTIN VAN ETTEN having been noted above as having perpetrated a traduction upon
my personality was, as can be seen above, offered a resolution face to face and, as can be seen above promptly “left the building”.
Quite clearly, MARTIN VAN ETTEN is [trimmed].
[Yes. Mod]

D.B. Stealey says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:51 pm
Evan Bedford,
“That is not to say that CO2 has zero effect. But it is a small third order forcing, which is swamped by second order forcings — which are in turn swamped by first order forcings.”
So what are the 1st and 2nd order forcings? From this source, it looks like they’re saying albedo and co2 uptake by plants.http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200105_senate/page4.html

Martin van Etten;
because of an incompatibilité d’humeur with you I will grant myselt a time-out
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
posting a video of a pig being suffocated to death in a gas chamber is your idea of humour?

Evan Bedford, “the mechanism is the same, whatever the concentration” may appear trivially true, but only in the sense that CO2 will still have absorption bands in the Infra-red.
What does not remain remain true is the integration of different mechanisms responsible for heat transport and IR radiation. The consequences of varying amounts of H2O, CO2, aerosols, clouds, albedo, atmospheric&oceanic convection, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, are not trivial.
In essence, assessing the relative contributions of these many factors over time and space and temperature is what the non-political part of the debate is about.

Evan, if we may assume that the US military Hitran and its free available derived Modtran calculating programs are right, then a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial values (from 280 to 560 ppmv) gives no more than 0.9°C increase in temperature. That is all that the basic mechanism of absorption by CO2 in the presence of water does. The rest of the 1.5-4.5 IPCC range is from feedbacks. Some of those feedbacks may be right, like an increase in water vapour (gives a total of 1.3°C, without other feedbacks). Some are certainly wrong, like the effect of clouds in a warming world (positive, according to the models) and some are very uncertain. As is the case for aerosols. Even the sign of the total effect of aerosols (white, reflecting, brown/black, absorbing) may be wrong in the models.
Thus the absorption characteristics of 100% CO2 in a lab or 400 ppmv CO2 in a real atmosphere are basically the same, but the effect is in no way comparable without knowing all the other variables which influence the effect, both as driver and as feedback…

Martin van Etten says:
March 4, 2013 at 4:23 ampersonnaly I remember the acid-rain and the forest dying of Scandinavia for instance, what means that SO2 / H2SO4 stayed long enough in the atmosphere to go from industrial centra in Western-Europe (London / Rotterdam) to do harm in Scandinavia;
That was another scare that was largely overblown: the percentage of trees with suboptimal health didn’t change in The Netherlands after SO2 levels were reduced… But the scare had (for that time) a positive result: power plants had to reduce their sulphur emissions, which also reduced other emissions like particulates, NOx, mercury… For transport mainly SO2 emissions were reduced by low-sulphur gasoil and gasoline.
More interesting is the effect of the reduction of SO2 emissions on regional temperatures. SO2 indeed has a short life: about 4 days as dry deposit, shorter if raining out. That makes that most of the effect would be within 10% of the earth’s surface and there 10 times stronger than in less affected areas. That also means that Scandinavia had most of the deposit from the upwind West-European industrial countries.
I obtained a graph from a calculation by the HadCM3 model, which shows where the regional effect of a reduction of SO2 (and ozone depleting, not of interest here) would occur: some 6°C increase in temperature near the Finnish-Russian border for the period 1990-1999, because of a 40% reduction in SO2 emissions over that period. This should be visible in the temperature trends, but is not. Only a sudden jump around 1990 in all stations, upwind and downwind of the main industrial areas, probably due to a switch of the NAO to strong positive. See:http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/aerosols.html
This simply shows that the effect of human aerosols is largely overblown in the models. Even the sign may be wrong… The consequence is that the real effect of 2xCO2 also is largely overblown, or the slightly cooling period 1945-1976 can’t be fitted by the model.

Ferdinand Englebeen;
This should be visible in the temperature trends, but is not. Only a sudden jump around 1990 in all stations, upwind and downwind of the main industrial areas,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In Canada, some tough questions got asked as to why the acid rain effects seems to be due north/south of the main industrial areas rather than aligned with the prevailing winds. The answer turned out to be geese. They were changing their migratory patterns to go around rather than over the industrial areas. That in turn meant they were making their overnight stops on different lakes. So the lakes that were no longer getting the benefit of a twice annual does of highly basic goose guano shortly became highly acidic due to run off from the pine trees (highly acidic resin) which predominate most areas.
So, I suppose that industrialization was at the end the root cause of those lakes becoming acidic…just not from “acid rain”.

tsFerdinand Engelbeen says:
March 4, 2013 at 12:37 pm
“Some are certainly wrong, like the effect of clouds in a warming world (positive, according to the models)”
So they should be negative? This is a Lindzen or Cristy argument, if I recall. Thanks. More fodder for my investigations.

Martin van Etten says:
“@ stealey
maybe you remember my earlier questions about arctic sea ice (in the Pachauri-matter); after you said some nonsense…”
van Etten, you blinkered fool, you start out like that and then demand that I answer your questions?? Your concerns are not my problem, they are your problem, along with the fact that the planet is debunking your entire belief system.

Evan Bedford says:
March 5, 2013 at 6:23 amSo they should be negative? This is a Lindzen or Cristy argument, if I recall. Thanks. More fodder for my investigations.

Have a look at what happens on sunny days (only a few in a year where I live…): the day starts cool and sunny, without any clouds. When it warms up, after a few hours some small low level clouds start to form, growing over time and eventually leading to thunderstorms.
The difference in insolation at ground level between direct sunlight and (low level) clouds: easely 200 W/m2 difference. Compared to that, the 4.7 W/m2 from a CO2 doubling is peanuts. If a small CO2 caused warming leads to more water vapour and that leads to more clouds, the net effect of the latter is a cooling feedback, not a warming one…
Most models include less clouds in a warming world:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101122172010.htm
But others think that it is in the other direction, less clouds cause warming:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091218122631.htm
Anyway, in several discussions of the past, cloud specialists were very surprised that the models incorporated clouds as a positive feedback, not a negative one…

I live in Australia where much fuss was made of the recently revised temperature scale implemented to cover the range that has existed here since records began. Why was it not done before? Because it was scaled to the coastal regions initially. Much ado has been made of this change but really it is only to justify the Carbon Tax imposed here. I saw an article on-linehttp://www.spacedaily.com/reports/In_prehistory_CO2_and_warming_went_in_lock-step_999.html
quoted from the US journal Science about a team led by French glaciologist Frederic Parrenin who has been examining ice cores from 5 deep drilling expeditions in Antarctica. They stated:
“By analysing the isotopic composition of the nitrogen gas in these samples, the researchers said they were able to filter out the confusing signal from the data. During the last deglaciation, the temperature rose by 19 degrees Celsius (34.2 degrees Fahrenheit) while at the same time CO2 levels in the atmosphere rose by about 100 parts per million, they said.”
If that relationship is to be believed then from what I understand we should have experienced during the last 3 centuries at least a 20c increase in global temperatures due to the 123 ppm (approx) increase in carbon content of the atmosphere in that period. The anomaly is the CO2 in the bubbles does not correspond to the level of warming indicated by the surrounding snowfall of that time. They go on to say:
“The discrepancy comes from the physical process by which CO2 bubbles are formed in successive layers of snow. “The gas bubbles are always more recent than the ice that surrounds them,” France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a statement.”
Err, I am a layman so my interpretation of this is: The ice that formed trapping the CO2 within it formed before the air it trapped inside it? Maybe that’s the case but it sounds dubious.
Bottom line is I believe the CO2 paranoia is just a scheme to tax the last thing left to tax. Air. There’s big dollars in this CO2 scam and the pigs are gathering at the trough. It has not been lost on me that it is predominantly independent scientists that question the dogma. Now it’s the volcanoes that have saved us from doom. Seems to me that there is always something that can be bent and or twisted to explain the failings of the predictive models.

Mud says:
March 5, 2013 at 8:08 pm “By analysing the isotopic composition of the nitrogen gas in these samples, the researchers said they were able to filter out the confusing signal from the data. During the last deglaciation, the temperature rose by 19 degrees Celsius (34.2 degrees Fahrenheit) while at the same time CO2 levels in the atmosphere rose by about 100 parts per million, they said.”
If that relationship is to be believed then from what I understand we should have experienced during the last 3 centuries at least a 20c increase in global temperatures due to the 123 ppm (approx) increase in carbon content of the atmosphere in that period. The anomaly is the CO2 in the bubbles does not correspond to the level of warming indicated by the surrounding snowfall of that time. They go on to say:
“The discrepancy comes from the physical process by which CO2 bubbles are formed in successive layers of snow. “The gas bubbles are always more recent than the ice that surrounds them,” France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said in a statement.”
Err, I am a layman so my interpretation of this is: The ice that formed trapping the CO2 within it formed before the air it trapped inside it? Maybe that’s the case but it sounds dubious.
Mud, I am also a layman, but have been since longer struggling with the debate, so here some points I learned on the subject: the confusion comes from the wrongful display of ice core data, showing temperature and CO2 variations, without showing that CO2 lags behind temperature with about 800 years gap.
CO2 is soluble in water, therefore rainwater contains a lot of CO2 taken from the atmosphere.
The oceans are the biggest CO2 known reservoir, CO2 is continuously emitted by volcanoes, submarine vents or other geological sources:http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.at/2012/09/new-paper-finds-large-geologic-source.html
however the variations seen in the ice core come mostly from the ocean, as warmer water contains less CO2:http://docs.engineeringtoolbox.com/documents/1148/solubility-co2-water.png
The relationship is reversed. When the oceans warm, they degass and let the CO2 in the atmosphere increase, this is what is seen in the ice cores.
It is not an increase in CO2 that causes the oceans to warm.
Warmista claim that CO2 is then increasing at its turn as a feedback the temperature even more, however if this would be the case the degassing would continue and even more CO2 would come in the atmosphere.
The CO2 effect facilitates heat transfer through radiation in certain bandwidth. The explanation of the CO2 greenhouse effect would be that more and more strata of CO2 are needed to “evacuate” the heat from the surface to space, and the last emission level goes higher, which would cause the lower level to heat-up.
The skeptics point out the fact that the heat transfer through CO2 is minimal, that heat transfer in the atmosphere is more complex, dominated by the water cycle and calculated CO2 effect to the whole of the atmosphere is around 1°C for a doubling of the CO2 (for CO2 reaching something around 2X 280 ppm = 560 ppm).
Having now about 390-400 ppm, if by the end of the century we will have another 160 ppm increase, we might expect 0.4°C temperature increase by then, if feedbacks are not negative (the effect is logarithmic, which means another 1°C would be achieved with 1120 ppm which would be the ideal level for plants and possibly never to be achieved doesn’t matter how much we struggle to do it) . On the other side, maybe by 2200 we have new ways of generating and storing energy?
Meanwhile no reason to panic, quite the contrary:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=9768http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-greening-of-the-planet.aspxhttp://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php
And we should focus on real problems like malnutrition, access to potable water and electricity for all, achieve basic hygiene standards and civilization levels, combat malaria…

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